Medicine at Hull And York Medical School & Interview Questions 2024

Key Aspects

🎓 Hull & York Medicine Interview Questions & Topics 2024

In your interview, we want to find out more about you, your personal characteristics and values, and your ability to think critically and work as a team. You will not be tested on your medical knowledge.

The structure of the interview is as follows:

• Two mini-interviews (20 points each)

• The mini-interviews will each focus on:

• Your understanding of current issues in medicine

• Insight into, and motivation for, a medical career

• Your critical thinking skills

• Group work scenario (20 points)

• This station will give us insight into how you work within a group or team, and into your personal qualities such as empathy, tolerance of ambiguity and resilience.

• Scenario Station (10 points)

• You will be given a theoretical situation, and asked to explain how you would respond to this in real life.

• Student station (10 points)

• The station will give you the opportunity to explore why you want to be a doctor

International Online Medicine Interviews are scored as follows:

• Mini interview 1 - up to 15 points

• Mini interview 2 - up to 15 points

• Mini interview 3 - up to 15 points

• Student station - up to 10 points

• Individual scenario station - up to 10 points

• Group scenario station - up to 15 points

Common topics that are covered at Hull and York Medical School Interview:

• Collaborative work

• Contribution to group discussions

• Insight into a medical career

• Understanding of NHS values and current medical issues

• Motivation for Medicine

• Motivation to study at Hull York

• Qualities of a good doctor

• Critical thinking & application

• Communication skills

During our selection process, the following criteria are considered:

• Academic ability, judged by prior academic performance and, where appropriate, predicted academic results

• Evidence of motivation and reasons for working in healthcare

• Evidence of a realistic understanding of healthcare issues and practice

• Written and oral communication skills, and suitability for an enquiry-based learning course

• Evidence of conscientiousness, self-motivation, responsibility and appropriate maturity and confidence

Hull York read all personal statements, but you are not scored on it. However, your personal statement will likely cover topics such as medical-related experience and personal attributes, which you may be asked about at your MMI, so it can be a useful starting point for interview preparation.

❓ Hull York 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 Hull & York?

3. What did you learn from your work experience?

4. What qualities of a doctor did you see from your work experience?

5. Why did you undertake work experience?

6. What do you know about the Hull & York Medicine course? How is it taught?

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

8. Why medicine and not dentistry or nursing?

9. Tell us about your volunteering

10. What are your hobbies?

11. 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. How would your friends describe you?

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

NHS & Local Area

1. What is the structure of the NHS?

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 Hull & York?

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. 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?

Other Stations

1. Role play: breaking bad news

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

3. You caught a friend cheating in an exam, what would you do about this?

🗣️ University of Hull Medicine Interview Tips 2024

1. Group presentations - Hull & York Medical School has group work 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. Practice Role Plays - this is the only way to become better at role-plays, and this has come every year at HYMS. Check out our articles in our free guides to find out more about this.

3. Have examples ready to use -  many of the questions asked at Hull & York 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. Personal Attributes - Hull & York 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. Hull & York 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. 

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. MMI Stations - remember that each MMI station at Hull & York 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.

8. Know the Hull & York Course - we would always recommend doing this for every university that you plan to apply to. Hull & York has a course that is jointly delivered by the universities of Hull and York. This means that there is a large demographic that is covered here. Students have placements in Scarborough, Scunthorpe, Grimsby and Middlesborough. In Year 1, students have a half day of placement either at a GP or in a hospital, alternating every Tuesday. In Year 2, this becomes a full day with longer clinics supplemented with extra teaching. This arrangement of clinical placement is a big highlight of studying at HYMS and it means you get to experience primary and secondary care equally in Phase I. 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 Hull & York? Remember there is very early clinical exposure at Hull & York - this can be an advantage!

9. Know the local area - Hull & York is a diverse region of England, with a number of local factors and diseases that differentiate the Hull & York 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?

10. Reflect Well - the Hull & York 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. Learn about the non-academic societies at Hull & York - 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 Hull & York University. Spend time on their website, or looking at their instagram for ideas about societies that you could think about joining.

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

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 - Hull & York 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.