Medicine at Kings College London & Interview Questions 2024

Key Aspects

🎓 King’s College London Medicine Interview Questions & Topics 2024

Suitability to be a health professional

• Communication skills

• Scientific knowledge

• Knowledge of ethical issues

• Decision making

Interviews are held between November and May and you must be available for an interview in order to be considered for admission. A large number of applications are received for Medicine and although we recognise that this is an anxious time for you, all applications are carefully considered and therefore you should not expect a decision post-interview until the cycle has completed in May.

Interviews are an essential part of the assessment process, and our interviewers are assessing communication skills, exploring general social and ethical issues, normally health-related, and assessing the interviewee’s general suitability for the programme and as a health professional, as well as how the interviewee will contribute to the university as a whole.

Interviews for the 2022 admissions cycle were conducted remotely with a panel of two interviewers.

King’s operates a “fit-to-sit” policy for interviews, therefore, we are unable to take into account mitigating circumstances for the interview performance. If there are any issues within the interview that you consider affected your performance, you should ensure these are raised with the Admissions team at the time.

Popular King's Medicine Interview Questions / Topics:

• Motivation and Insight into Medicine

• Personal statement/General Stations

• Ethical dilemma/scenario

• Case Article Review

• Your opinion on recent health news

• Data Analysis

• Observation Tasks

• Role play Station

💯 Kings Medical Interview Questions Scoring 2024

A standardised interviewer assessment score sheet accompanies each station. Interviewers have no prior knowledge of candidates before they meet them at each station.

❓ Kings (KCL) 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 Kings?

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 Kings 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?

11. How has King’s College London contributed to modern medicine?

12. What can you contribute to the atmosphere at King’s College London?

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 is your opinion of the … case?

10. What were the main issues raised in this case?

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 are the common barriers to healthcare faced by people?

4. What is it like to be a doctor?

5. How do you deal with overpopulation?

6. What do you know about the local area here in Kings?

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

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

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

10. Common healthcare topic – something from the news or topics such as world health

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 the debate surrounding euthanasia, should it be legalised?

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

5. What are the arguments that surround the pro choice and pro life abortion debate?

6. Key values and qualities (NHS values), e.g. teamwork, kindness, compassion and empathy, respect for the individual, privacy and dignity, advocacy, decision-making and integrity.

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

8. What do you know about the Charlie Gard case?

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

Other Stations

1. Role play: bullying

2. Role play: breaking bad news

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

4. Role play: eating disorders

5. Describe a picture, and explain why you were asked to do so?

6. Describe this picture of a kitchen to an actor? Why have you been asked to do this?

7. Data interpretation: draw this graph

🗣️ University of Kings Medicine Interview Tips 2024

1. Have examples ready to use: many of the questions asked at King's 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.

2. Personal Attributes - King's is very likely to ask you about personal attributes during the MMI interview. They especially like to ask about teamwork and communication. As such it is paramount that you go through and learn these. King's have repeatedly focussed on your strengths and weaknesses as a person, so make sure that you have suitable examples for this. Check out our 420+ interview question and answer guide for dealing with such interview questions. 

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. MMI Stations - remember that each MMI station at King's 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.

6. Know the King's Course - we would always recommend doing this for every university that you plan to apply to. King's has an integrated course. 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 King's? Remember there is very early clinical exposure at King's - this can be an advantage!

7. Know the local area - King's is a diverse region of London, with a number of local factors and diseases that differentiate the London Bridge 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?

8. Reflect Well - the King's 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.

9. Practice Role Plays: Role plays are unique to medicine MMI interviews as they do not tend to occur in panel interviews. 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.

10. 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.

11. Learn about the non-academic societies at King's - 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 King's University. Spend time on their website, or looking at their instagram for ideas about societies that you could think about joining.

12. Learn Medical Ethics & NHS Hot Topics - it is extremely likely that you will be asked about medical ethics at a medicine interview at King's, 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 420+ 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 - King's 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.