Medicine at University of Dundee Medical School & Interview Questions 2024

Key Aspects

🎓 Dundee Medicine Interview Questions & Topics 2024

The Dundee medicine interview assesses:

• communication skills

• ability to work in a team

• personal values.

They seek caring and hardworking individuals. They will also be interested in your work experience, but recognise that this could have been difficult during the pandemic.

💯 Dundee Medical Interview Questions Scoring in 2024

Dundee offers candidates a place solely based on their performance at the interview.

❓ Dundee 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 Dundee?

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 Dundee Medicine course? How is it taught?

6. Why medicine and not dentistry or nursing?

7. Tell us about your volunteering

8. What are your hobbies?

9. What are the negatives of a career in medicine?

10. How will you contribute to Dundee medical school?

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 is the importance of teamwork within medicine?

7. What are your strengths and weaknesses?

8. Why is it important for doctors to communicate effectively?

9. How would your friends describe you?

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

11. What is the training pathway of a doctor after medical school?

NHS & Local Area

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

2. How would you improve the local A&E department?

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 Dundee?

7. How might healthcare in Scotland be different to that in England?

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

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

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

11. How does the healthcare system differ here compared to other areas in the UK?

12. How does NHS Scotland differ from NHS England?

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

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

6. What does patient confidentiality mean? When might you break it?

Other Stations

1. Role play: breaking bad news

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

3. Role play: substance abuse

🗣️ The University of Dundee Medicine Interview Tips 2024

1. Have examples ready to use: many of the questions asked at Dundee 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. Know the doctor training pathway: this is a common question that comes up at Dundee, fortunately, we have a guide to the NHS and the doctor’s training pathway.

3. 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.

4. MMI Stations - remember that each MMI station at Dundee 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.

5. Reflect Well - the Dundee 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.

6. 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.

7. Know the local area - Dundee is a diverse region situated in Scotland, with a number of local factors and diseases that is different 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? Make sure you know about the Scottish NHS. Although not stated explicitly on their website, questions revolving around NHS Scotland may pop up in your Dundee medicine interview. Make sure you understand how it differs from NHS England and the NHS overall, what it means that the NHS is devolved, as well as the pros and cons of the devolved system.

8. Know the Dundee Course - Dundee has a unique course in Scotland, make sure that you know what is unique about it, and how this might help you become an even better medical student. As a new university, Dundee has aspects of its course that are specific to it, like the method of early integration with clinical exposure, and the new buildings - knowing about these will help augment your interview answers.

9. Data interpretation - make sure that you practice these questions, as they come up every year at Dundee. 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.

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 Dundee - 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 Dundee University.

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

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 - Dundee 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.