Medicine at University of Plymouth Medical School & Interview Questions 2024

Key Aspects

🎓 University of Plymouth Medicine Interview Questions & Topics 2024

Attributes that are tested in the MMI will include:

• Integrity/Probity

• Awareness of self and one’s limitations

• Veracity/honesty

• Motivation/commitment

• Pro social attitudes e.g. non-judgmental, empathetic

• Communication and listening skills

• Insight into profession

• Ability to be a team player

• Deals with stress appropriately

• Resilience

• Problem solving skills

• Potential for leadership

💯 Plymouth Medical MMI Interview Questions Scoring 2024

Candidates are scored on the following:

• Integrity, veracity and honesty

• Flexibility

• Motivation and commitment

• Pro-social attitudes and communication skills, including listening

• Insight into what it is to be a doctor

• The ability to be a team player, but show potential leadership skills

• The ability to deal with stress, and to know one’s limitations, strengths and weaknesses

• Problem-solving skills

• Reflection

❓ Plymouth 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 interview preparation. 

Motivation to study medicine

1. Why do you think you will be well suited to this course?

2. What is the role of a doctor within the MDT?

3. Why medicine and not dentistry or nursing?

4. Tell us about your volunteering

5. What is your understanding of good patient care?

6. What are your hobbies?

7. What are the positives and negatives of a career in medicine?

8. What aspects of a career in medicine will you enjoy?

9. What areas of medicine do you think you will find more difficult to embrace and flourish in?

Personal Insight

1. Why should patients trust you?

2. What are your best qualities?

3. How do you manage stress?

4. Tell us about a recent setback. How would you prevent the same thing from happening again?

5. What is empathy? Why is it important in medicine?

6. What are the qualities of a successful? Do you have them?

7. What is integrity? Why is it important in medicine?

8. Tell us about a project where you worked on your own. What would you do differently next time?

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

10. Tell us about a time when you communicated well in a difficult situation

11. Provide us with an example of when you had to compromise. Is this important as a doctor?

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

13. What can make a team fail? What would you do in a situation where a person in your team doesn’t share the same ideas as you?

14. Tell us about a time you failed at a task.

NHS & Local Area

1. Tell us about something you have recently read that is related to medical ethics.

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 Plymouth?

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 just outside of London 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. If you notice that a colleague has turned up to work drunk, what would you do?

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

7. Ethics: A pregnant woman has previously stated that she does not want to be resuscitated if her heart stops during childbirth. However, when she goes into cardiac arrest, her husband demands that everything be done to save her. Discuss the ethical considerations and how you would handle the situation.

8. Ethics: A patient with advanced cancer requests assisted suicide. Discuss the ethical considerations and how you would approach the situation.

9. Professionalism: A colleague of yours is consistently late for surgeries and appointments. How would you address this issue with them?

10. Professionalism: A patient confides in you about a serious crime they have committed. Discuss the ethical and legal implications of this situation and how you would handle it.

11. Ethics: A patient with a terminal illness request to be placed in a medically induced coma until a cure is found. Discuss the ethical considerations and how you would approach the situation.

🗣️ Plymouth Medicine Interview Tips 2024

1. Ethical Scenarios - Plymouth have ethical scenarios every year at interview. They provided several tips on answering ethical questions. They have mentioned that there is not a single right answer, use evidence or explanation to back up your answers, explain your thought processes, don’t assume prior knowledge on the interviewers’ part – not all interviewers will be medics, and show awareness and recognition of different viewpoints, don’t ‘sit on the fence’ – have an opinion and take a common sense approach

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

3. Have examples ready to use: many of the questions asked at Plymouth 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. Know what to expect - Remember interviews can be conducted by a range of professionals and you may not only be interviewed by a doctor. You may encounter careers professional, actors, professional support staff, and teaching staff, particularly in MMIs. Avoid using very technical terms, you may have more clinical knowledge than those assessing you.

5. Personal Attributes - Plymouth is very likely to ask you about personal attributes during their vMMI interview. As such it is paramount that you go through and learn these.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. MMI Stations - remember that each MMI station at Plymouth 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.

9. Know the Plymouth 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? Remember there is very early clinical exposure at Plymouth - this can be an advantage!

10. Know the local area - Plymouth is in a diverse region of England, with a number of local factors and diseases that differentiate the South Coast region from the rest of the UK. Ensure that you research both communicable and non-communicable diseases in the area. They have a number of services here including Plymouth university medical centre to support students. How might this impact healthcare provision in the area?

11. Reflect Well - the Plymouth 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.

12. Practice Role Plays: Role plays are unique to medicine 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.

13. 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.

14. Learn about the non-academic societies at Plymouth - 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 Plymouth University. Spend time on their website, or looking at their Instagram for ideas about societies that you could think about joining.

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 - Plymouth 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.