Medicine at University of Lancaster Medical School & Interview Questions 2023

Key Aspects

🎓 Lancaster Medicine Interview Questions & Topics 2023

There are a number of topics that are more likely to come up at the University of Lancaster Medical School MMI Interview, which can be derived from past Lancaster MMI stations, including:

• Teamwork and leadership

• Understanding of the career

• Work experience reflection

• NHS knowledge

• Course teaching style suitability

💯 Lancaster Medical Interview Questions Scoring 2023

At each station, your performance will be assessed against a set of clearly defined criteria, allowing the interviewer to assign you a score for that station. Interviewers are drawn from a pool of trained individuals and will include academic staff, clinicians, students, patients and public representatives. At the end, an overall score is calculated by adding up all the individual scores and offers will be made to those who score highest overall in the MMI.

❓ Lancaster Medical Interview Past Questions 2023 & 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. 

Examples of MMI stations at Lancaster

Example 1: Discuss an ethical scenario. You will have 5 minutes to read a short paragraph that outlines a current issue in medical ethics, make notes and consider your opinion. You will then have a further 5 minutes in the next station to discuss your thoughts with an interviewer. There is no right or wrong answer; this station will assess your ability to identify the issues and articulate your opinion.

Example 2: Explore your understanding of your chosen career, through a discussion of your personal statement, and work and voluntary experience, including what you learned about your own suitability to be a doctor from these experiences.

Example 3: Talk to one of our patient and public representative group. You are not expected to take a medical history; we just want you to find out a bit about them. This will involve asking questions and responding to what the person says. We will be observing how you interact with the person and how you respond to their answers

Motivation to study medicine

1. Why medicine?

2. Why Lancaster?

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 Lancaster 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. What characteristic do you think you need to work on?

8. How would your friends describe you?

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

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. What could be improved about the NHS?

5. How do you deal with overpopulation?

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

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. 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. Knowledge on IVF guidelines

6. Designer babies

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

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

Other 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: graphs, charts, images, health data

5. Communication: keeping a conversation flowing

🗣️ Lancaster Medicine Interview Tips 2023

1. Group task - Lancaster Medical School has group observation 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 this, 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.

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

4. 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 in 2023 here. E.g. you should know that as part of the early clinical exposure that you will benefit from at Lancaster, you will be rotating through Royal  Lancaster Infirmary (RLI), Furness General Hospital (FGH) in  Barrow, Royal Blackburn Hospital and, Blackpool Victoria Hospital.

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 Lancaster 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 Lancaster Course - uses a PBL method of teaching (Problem Based Learning). This is the way that the core curriculum is delivered in Years 1-4. 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 Lancaster? Remember there is very early clinical exposure at Lancaster - this can be an advantage!

8. Know the local area - Lancaster is a region of England with a relatively low socioeconomic status, with a number of local factors and diseases that differentiate the Lancaster region from the rest of the UK. This means that there are often higher rates of obesity, malnutrition, obesity and smoking in this region. 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 Lancaster 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. 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 Lancaster - 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 Lancaster 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 Lancaster, 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 - Lancaster 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.