Medicine at University of Nottingham Medical School & Interview Questions 2024

Key Aspects

🎓 Nottingham Medicine Interview Questions & Topics 2024

If you're planning on applying to study medicine in Nottingham, you should know that their admissions process includes two role-play stations. These stations are designed to test your ability to show empathy, caring, and being non-judgmental. 

One station involves interacting with a trained actor who will give you a task to complete. The second station is with a fourth year medical student where you'll have a conversation about medical issues or a hypothetical clinical scenario.

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

• good communication and listening skills,

• an understanding of professional issues such as teamwork

• respect for patients and the contribution of those working in professions allied to medicine.

💯 Nottingham Medical MMI Interview Questions Scoring 2024

Interviews are offered to candidates based on scores as calculated by our selection process. The percentage threshold varies from year to year based on the number of applicants. There is a fast track to interview if you have completed their summer school.

❓ Nottingham Medical Interview Interview 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 Nottingham?

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 Nottingham 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. What challenges have you witnessed in your work experience and how did you cope with them?

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. Teaching is an inherent part of the work of doctors at any level of expertise. What form does teaching take in medicine?

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

NHS & Local Area

1. Should the NHS be privatised?

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

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

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 Nottingham?

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. What do you think about the junior doctor pay dispute?

2. Do you think NHS workers are paid enough?

3. Should doctors strike?

4. Understanding of the four ethical principles

5. Medically related current affairs e.g. 7-day NHS, NHS and Brexit

6. Understanding of the GMC’s good medical practice

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

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

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

10. 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. Speak to an actor, who is an elderly lady struggling to read her prescription. Offer her your help and explain her medication times to her.

4. Empathy: You are in a PBL session and your friend comes in with a black eye. How do you approach the situation? What do you have to consider when enquiring about her eye?

5. Talk us through this article

6. You are planning a social event for the medical society at the university, look at the list of tasks and decide and explain which order you would do them.

7. Role play: explain to someone how to tie shoelaces

8. Professionalism: Your supervisor is drunk - what are the ethical issues and what action should you take?

9. Prioritisation - very common at Nottingham - ranking individuals in different scenarios in the order you would do things.

10. Manual dexterity: Test jar of ‘urine’ following instructions and with correct equipment.

🗣️ Nottingham Medicine Interview Tips for 2024 entry

1. Have examples ready to use: many of the questions asked at Nottingham 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 - Nottingham 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. Nottingham 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. 

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 Notts 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 Nottingham 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 Nottingham? Remember there is very early clinical exposure at Nottingham - this can be an advantage!

7. Know the local area - Nottingham is a diverse region of England, with a number of local factors and diseases that differentiate the Nottingham 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 Nottingham 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 benefited 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. 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.

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 Nottingham - 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 Nottingham 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 Nottingham, 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 - Notts 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.