Medicine at University of Aston Medical School & Interview Questions 2023

Key Aspects

🎓 Aston Medicine Interview Questions & Topics 2023

Aston Medical School is looking for qualities in its students such as:

• Oral and written communication

• Listening

• Empathy, compassion, respect and dignity

• Emotional intelligence

• Problem solving

• Motivation

• Teamworking

• Being able to lead as well as follow

• Knowing your limitations and knowing when to ask for help

• Roleplays

As such, these are likely to form the backbone of the domains tested at the MMI Medical School Interview.

You will not be tested on medical knowledge. When writing the scenarios for the MMIs, we take into consideration the typical age and experience of our applicants.

💯 Aston Medical Interview Questions Scoring in 2023

• Each station will be scored individually, and an overall score then calculated

• Therefore each station is scored independently from the other

❓Aston Medical Interview Interview Past Questions 2023

Please find below a list of suggested questions that could come up at your interview in 22/23 based on the information provided by the university. 

Motivation to study medicine

1. Why do you want to come to Aston to study medicine?

2. Why medicine?

3. Tell us about your work experience

4. What did you learn from your work experience?

5. What do you know about the Aston Medicine course? How is it taught?

6. Why do you think you will be well suited to this course?

7. Why medicine and not dentistry or nursing?

8. Tell us about your volunteering

9. What are your hobbies?

10. What are the negatives of a career in medicine?

Personal Insight

1. Why should patients trust you?

2. What are your best qualities?

3. How do you manage stress?

4. How do you relax outside of your studies?

5. Why do doctors need a good work-life balance?

6. Tell us about a time that you displayed empathy

7. Give us an example of a time when you demonstrated teamwork.

8. Give us an example of a time where you demonstrated good communication skills

9. What are your strengths and weaknesses?

10. How would your friends describe you?

11. How do you motivate yourself? How do you remain motivated?

12. Tell us about a time where you have failed.

13. Tell us about an article that you have recently read.

14. Should doctors always tell the truth?

NHS & Local Area

1. What changes would you make to the NHS if you could?

2. How would you manage a public health campaign?

3. How would you improve the local A&E department?

4. If you had control of the NHS, what would you change?

5. What is it like to be a doctor?

6. How do you deal with overpopulation?

7. What do you know about the local area here in Aston?

8. What are the main challenges that face the NHS?

9. How has COVID changed the way the NHS operates?

10. What do you think are going to be the long-term consequences of COVID on the NHS?

11. How does the healthcare system differ here compared to other areas in the UK?

Ethical Scenarios

1. Understanding of the four ethical principles

2. Understanding of the GMC’s good medical practice

3. What is your understanding of the NHS values?

4. What is the debate surrounding euthanasia, should it be legalised?

5. Who would you give this organ to? [Prioritisation]

6. If you notice that a colleague has turned up to work drunk, what would you do?

7. Who can you escalate concerns to within a hospital?

8. When is it acceptable to break confidentiality?

Role Plays

1. Scenarios concerning dealing with argumentative people/friends/customers - appeasing them

2. Talking to strangers and getting to know them and understanding their attributes. 

🗣️ Aston Medicine Interview Tips for 2023 entry

1. Know Your Medicine Personal Statement: The Aston Medical School website states that “Personal statements are required and may be used as part of the interview (MMI) process”. As a result, it is paramount that you know your personal statement inside out. Be prepared to talk about any aspect of your personal statement. E.g. if you mentioned the EPQ - make sure you can talk about this in some detail, be able to talk about what you learnt about and maybe even the implications of research on clinical medicine.

2. Practice Role Plays: Role plays are unique to medicine MMI interviews as they do not tend to occur in panel interviews. The only way to ace these stations is to practice! Aston often has two role play stations, so you must practice this! There are so many different medicine role-play scenarios that can come up, such as breaking bad news in the medicine interview, it is paramount that you read about tips for answering role-play scenarios. You might want to also consider practising this with a medicine interview tutor, or booking a 1-1 online mock interview.

3. Have examples ready to use: many of the questions asked at Aston are example-based, ie, they require you to draw on certain examples from your personal life, medical work experience and medical volunteering to help make key points that the selectors are looking for. As such, it is paramount that you spend time learning about these examples and thinking about different scenarios that you can use at the interview. It is helpful if these scenarios are malleable and can be applied to a number of different questions e.g. being a football captain, deputy head girl or playing in the school orchestra.

4. Personal Attributes - Aston is very likely to ask you about personal attributes during the MMI interview. As such it is paramount that you go through and learn these. Check out our 200+ interview question and answer guide for dealing with such interview questions. 

5. Know the doctor training pathway: this is useful to draw into answers to show awareness about the career in medicine - and demonstrates that you have a considered approach, fortunately, we have a guide to the NHS and the doctor’s training pathway in 2023 here.

6. Read the MMI instructions carefully - you get enough time to read the instructions provided before the MMI station. Make sure that you don’t miss anything from this. Try and plan how you will structure your answer thereafter in the reading time that you get. Therefore it is really important that you practice MMI questions and ensure that you think about your structure for as many questions as possible before your interview.

7. MMI Stations - remember that each MMI station at Aston is independent of the other. Therefore it is paramount that you try to treat them as such, if you have a bad station, try to forget about it and reset for the next station, this gives you the best chance of scoring well overall. Read our ultimate guide to preparing for medicine MMIs here.

8. Know the Aston Course - we would always recommend doing this for every university that you plan to apply to. It is paramount that you know about the different topics covered each year. How does this differ from other universities? What is their policy on intercalation? Have you any idea about what you would plan to intercalate in at Aston?

9. Know the local area - Aston is a diverse region of England, with a number of local factors and diseases that differentiate the Aston region from the rest of England. Ensure that you research both communicable and non-communicable diseases in the area. How might this impact healthcare provision in the area?

10. Reflect Well - the Aston Medicine selectors love reflection, make sure that you are good at not just stating what you have learnt, but also how this helped and what you benefitted from, and what you will carry forward about this at medical school and in clinical medicine. This is especially true when reflecting on your medical work experience during the medicine interview.

11. Don’t over-rehearse - this is a common theme amongst interview students and is very obvious to a trained examiner. As such, we would recommend focusing on the structure of your answer, and then naturally letting it flow when speaking to the answers, concentrating on the delivery of your interview answers. Read about our top tips for medicine interviews here. If you are struggling with this, consider booking sessions with an expert medicine interview tutor.

12. Learn Medical Ethics & NHS Hot Topics - it is extremely likely that you will be asked about medical ethics at a medicine interview at Aston, so there is no excuse not to brush up on your knowledge on these topics, especially the four pillars of medical ethics. Learn how to provide a balanced argument on this. Check out some of our free articles on NHS Hot Topics here. It is good if you have an opinion on them, as long as you present a balanced and well-reasoned argument, ultimately, which side you choose does not matter, but is helpful to have. Check out our bank of 200+ medicine interview questions.

13. Learn the NHS Core Values - This can be drawn into different answers about personal qualities or qualities of a doctor, which has formed a feature of stations in the past, and a good understanding of these core values will help you stand out against others. It is important to know about the NHS in general for your medical interviews - read our article here on this.

14. Good Medical Practice - Aston also puts emphasis on knowing the values and qualities of a good doctor, which can be found in this document and are likely to come up at the interview in the MMI stations. This is universal to many universities, and something that we always recommend students cover during their medicine interview preparation.

15. Learn about the non-academic societies at Aston - this is really important and might augment your Why Medicine question as well as help you formulate an answer to how you will contribute to life at Aston University. Spend time on their website, or looking at their instagram for ideas about societies that you could think about joining.