Medicine at Kent And Medway Medical School & Interview Questions 2024

Key Aspects

🎓 Kent & Medway Medicine Interview Questions & Topics 2024

As part of the selection process, Kent & Medway are looking for:

• A resilient all-rounder who can demonstrate a number of skills and attributes

• A realistic and committed attitude to medical training and clinical practice

• A commitment to quality of care, compassion and improving lives

• An understanding of the NHS core values and the ability to reflect on their importance

• The ability to communicate and work effectively in a team for the benefit of patients

• An appreciation of the need to treat people with dignity and respect

• The ability to appreciate other people’s points of view

• A willingness to accept responsibility

In the past years, Kent and Medway Medical School had conducted fairly long and unique MMI interviews. The MMI was comprised of 6 stations, each lasting 7 minutes (+ 2 minutes of downtime between stations) and a 42-minute group station, where students are asked to do a task or discuss a scenario with a group of other candidates.

During the group station, you’ll be observed and assessed by the interviewers on your interpersonal skills, such as your ability to work efficiently in a group, communication, empathy etc.

❓ Kent Medical Interview Past Questions 2024 & likely topics

Please find below a list of suggested questions that could come up at your interview this year, created by our team to help guide your preparation. 

Motivation to study medicine

1. Why medicine?

2. Why Kent & Medway?

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 Kent & Medway 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. Can you provide us with an example of a time when you demonstrated resilience?

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

6. What are your strengths and weaknesses?

7. How would your friends describe you?

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

9. What do you think are the most rewarding aspects of being a doctor? Can you compare them to the most challenging parts of the career?

10. When did you first realise that you wanted to be a doctor?

11. What have you done to further your knowledge of the profession?

12. Why are you interested in studying at this university? What sets our course apart in your opinion?

13. Where do you see the field of Medicine going in the next 25 years?

NHS & Local Area

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

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

3. What is it like to be a doctor?

4. How do you deal with overpopulation?

5. What do you know about the local area here in Kent & Medway?

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

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

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

9. 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 the debate surrounding euthanasia, should it be legalised?

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

5. A young mother comes with their 3-years old child to your GP practice as a part of the routine immunisation schedule. However, the mother reveals that she decided not to vaccinate their child against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) and appears to be anxious. What would you do?

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?

🗣️ University of Kent Medicine Interview Tips 2024

1. Data interpretation - make sure that you practice these questions, as they come up every year at KMMS. Make sure that you are familiar with reading graphs and tables, and are able to relate them to clinical medicine, with an explanation of the consequences of the statistics shown. We have worked examples to data interpretation questions here.

2. Group task - Kent & Medway Medical School has group work as part of their medicine interview. This means that you will need to be comfortable being watched, analysed and judged throughout this process. Learn how to listen to others, before interjecting and having your own opinion on things about how we should process. Be clear, and concise whilst avoiding waffling. It is important to demonstrate that you are a good leader, team player and speaker here. Try to be proactive throughout the group interview at Kent University, encourage others to give their ideas, and do not just dismiss what others say. If you are stuck on what to do, volunteer to be the scribe for the sessions.

3. Have examples ready to use: many of the questions asked at Kent & Medway 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 - Kent & Medway 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. Kent & Medway have repeatedly focussed on your strengths and weaknesses as a person, so make sure that you have suitable examples for this. 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 mention in 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.

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 Kent & Medway 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 Kent & Medway Course - we would always recommend doing this for every university that you plan to apply to. Kent and Medway medical school is, in fact, a mix of the highlights of a few universities and medical schools: The medical course is carried out jointly by the University of Kent and the University of Canterbury and is based on Brighton and Sussex’s integrated MBBS curriculum. The BM BS programme at Kent and Medway puts a large emphasis on clinical exposure and a patient-centred approach to practising medicine. For this reason, in between lectures, tutorials and PBL lessons, you’ll get to a lot of clinical activities, which will start as early as the first semester of Year 1. What is their policy on intercalation? Have you any idea about what you would plan to intercalate in at Kent & Medway? Remember there is very early clinical exposure at Kent & Medway - this can be an advantage!

9. Know the local area - Kent & Medway is a diverse region of England, with a number of local factors and diseases that differentiate the Kent & Medway region from the rest of the UK. 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 Kent & Medway 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. 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.

12. 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.

13. Learn about the non-academic societies at Kent & Medway - 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 Kent & Medway University. Spend time on their website, or looking at their instagram for ideas about societies that you could think about joining.

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

15. 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.

16. Good Medical Practice - Kent & Medway 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.