Medicine at University of Birmingham Medical School & Interview Questions 2024

Key Aspects

🎓 Birmingham Medicine Interview Questions & Topics 2024

• Critical thinking (interview) - you will be presented with a healthcare topic that you are not expected to know about. You must identify relevant issues and present a balanced argument for both sides, before suggesting an appropriate course of action.

• Commitment and insight into medicine (interview) - You will be asked to discuss specific aspects of your work experience and your reflections on this, especially where you have provided care or support to a vulnerable individual. They will focus on insights gained from this work experience and from watching other healthcare professionals (not necessarily doctors)

• Dealing with personal and ethical challenges (interview) - You will be provided with a scenario relating to potential challenges faced by staff working in healthcare. You have the opportunity to demonstrate your understanding of the personal qualities important for coping in a demanding career and also provide an assessment of your own capabilities in dealing with this challenge.

• Data interpretation (interview)
  You will be provided with a clinically relevant data set and asked to interpret this and then draw conclusions that are appropriate to the scenario. You are not expected to have prior clinical knowledge in order to do this. Thinking about how you might communicate information to a patient or their carer in an accurate but accessible manner is an important element of this task. You must keep your answer jargon-free.

• Interaction in a healthcare setting station (role-play) - Your skills in communication are important throughout the interview process, but in this station, you will be engaging with one of the professional role-players used for training and assessing healthcare students. You are expected to interact with the role player as if the situation is real. The role player will be assuming a specified role. Your skills in establishing an effective rapport whilst dealing effectively with the challenges that will be presented to you will be assessed.

• Interaction in a Social Setting station (role-play) - This role-play station gives you a chance to show how comfortable and confident you are meeting a new person and having a short conversation covering issues of substance, as well as giving appropriate advice relevant to the scenario. In the role play, you will be interacting with a university student. You’ll be provided with a brief paragraph to explain the context of the conversation, and then how it runs depends on how you respond to the student prompts.

• Calculation station (computer-based stations) - You will be asked to undertake simple mathematical calculations involving data that has clinical relevance. The mathematical skills that are being tested are at or below the GCSE level, and those taking A-level Mathematics are not necessarily at an advantage. The sophistication of each task is to recognise which piece or pieces of data need to be manipulated at a particular stage and to determine the precise logical and mathematical approach that needs to be applied. There will be a number of stages in the calculations, and establishing the order in which these are performed is important, too.

💯 Birmingham (UOB) Medical Interview Questions Scoring 2024

Offers will be based on interview performance data & the SJT result from UCAT.

The maximum score for each MMI station and the SJT component will be the same (i.e. all stations and the SJT component are equally weighted). The following scoring system will be applied to the SJT result:

• Band 1 = Maximum score

• Band 2 = 2/3 of maximum

• Band 3 = 1/3 of maximum

• Band 4 = 0

It may be possible to fail the overall interview by not meeting a minimum standard on just one of the stations. This minimum standard is usually set well below the average score.

Offers are based on interview performance and SJT score only, not academic merit. Academic factors are no longer looked at once a candidate has reached the interview stage (unless they are borderline with another student).

❓ Birmingham Medical Interview Past, Recent & Likely Questions 2024

Motivation to study medicine

1. Why medicine?

2. Why Birmingham?

3. What did you learn from your work experience?

4. What qualities of a doctor did you see from your work experience?

5. What do you know about the Birmingham 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. Have you ever made a mistake? What did you learn from it?

2. Why should patients trust you?

3. What are your best qualities?

4. How do you manage stress?

5. Can you provide us with an example of a time when you demonstrated resilience?

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

7. What are your strengths and weaknesses?

8. How would your friends describe you?

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

10. Should doctors always tell the truth?

NHS & Local Area

1. What is the CQC?

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

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

4. What are the NHS values and why are they important?

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 Birmingham?

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. NHS Hot Topics - sugar tax, nitrous oxide, NHS service pricing, organ donation, obesity, smoking

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. What do you think about the change to opt-out organ donation?

9. How would you speak to a student who thinks that smokers should not be treated on the NHS?

MMI Specific Stations

1. Role play: breaking bad news

2. Role play: explain to someone how to draw this picture

3. Role play: substance abuse

4. Data interpretation: draw this graph, what do you think about this graph? Talk us through your interpretation of this piece of data

🗣️ Birmingham Medicine Interview Tips 2024

1. Practice Maths - given that there is always a calculation station in the Birmingham interview, it is paramount that you brush up on your data interpretation and graph reading. These are easy marks to get, so it is inexcusable not to do well here.

2. Have examples ready to use: many of the questions asked at Birmingham 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.

3. Personal Attributes - Birmingham 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. 

4. Know the doctor training pathway: this is a common question that comes up at Birmingham, fortunately, we have a guide to the NHS and the doctor’s training pathway.

5. 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.

6. MMI Stations - remember that each MMI station at Birmingham 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.

7. Know the Birmingham 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 Birmingham?

8. Know the local area - Birmingham is a diverse region of England, with a number of local factors and diseases that differentiate the Birmingham 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?

9. Reflect Well - the Birmingham 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.

10. 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! 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 and practice MMI calculation stations. You might want to also consider practising this with a medicine interview tutor, or booking a 1-1 online mock 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 about the non-academic societies at Birmingham - 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 Birmingham University. Spend time on their website, or looking at their instagram for ideas about societies that you could think about joining.

13. Learn Medical Ethics & NHS Hot Topics - it is extremely likely that you will be asked about medical ethics at a medicine interview at Birmingham, 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.

14. 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.

15. Good Medical Practice - Birmingham 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.