Medicine at University of Leeds Medical School & Interview Questions 2024

Key Aspects

🎓 Leeds Medicine Interview Questions & Topics 2024

Leeds medical school have stated that you are likely to be asked about your work experience and knowledge about the profession at the interview.

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

• Discuss the BMAT Section 3 essay

• General/Personal Statement Station

• Personal qualities & insight

• Role play Station

• Motivation & Insight into Medicine

• Ethical Dilemma

❓ Leeds 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 Leeds?

3. What did you learn from your work experience?

4. Have you ever doubted whether you want to do medicine?

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

6. What do you know about the Leeds 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 do you understand about what a career in medicine entails? How will the Leeds course help you towards this?

12. What are the negatives of a career in medicine? How did you overcome these thoughts?

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 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. How do you deal with overpopulation?

5. What do you know about the local area here in Leeds?

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

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

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

9. 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?

7. Should doctors be paid to go to pharmaceutical conferences?

Other Stations

1. Tell us about your BMAT essay

2. Role play: breaking bad news

3. Describe how you would communicate with a patient who is worried about an upcoming surgery.

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

5. Role play: substance abuse

6. Role play: demonstrating empathy for health conditions or grief

7. Understanding of communication techniques needed for different people

8. Data interpretation: draw this graph

9. Talk us through this article

10. Analysis of a newspaper article about medical news, what are your thoughts on it

🗣️ Leeds Medicine Interview Tips 2024

1. Leeds Medicine Interview Article Analysis - it is fundamental that you spend time practising and researching articles that they could give you. There is no excuse not to. You must learn everything about it, critically analyse the article and work out its strengths and weaknesses. Make sure that you know how to apply the four medical principles to this article. What are the implications of this article on the NHS or how doctors may act? These are aspects that you can consider commenting upon.

2. Expect follow-up questions - this is especially true for the questions in the article, and less so for the personal questions. As such, we would recommend keeping your answers short, at a maximum of 2 minutes to allow them to ask the questions that they must ask so that you can score full marks.

3. BMAT Essay - Once you have completed your BMAT examination, note down the key points made in your section three essay so that you can annotate and elaborate on these, during the interview. One of the stations often involves a discussion of your BMAT essay.

4. Have examples ready to use: many of the questions asked at Leeds 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.

5. Personal Attributes - Leeds 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. Leeds has 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. 

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 Leeds 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. Manage perceptions - As with any interview, it is all about managing the interviewer’s perception of you and painting yourself in the best light possible. The MMI process means that you must impress a larger number of people over a shorter time period. The key to managing this form of interview is to ensure that your focus remains on the current station, rather than previous ones (which may or may not have gone as well as expected). There are two minutes between stations, in which to read the instructions/task and to refocus before the interview begins.

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

11. Know the local area - Leeds is a diverse region of England, with a number of local factors and diseases that differentiate the Leeds 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?

12. Reflect Well - the Leeds 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.

13. 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.

14. 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.

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

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

17. 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.

18. Good Medical Practice - Leeds 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.