Medicine at University of St Andrews Medical School & Interview Questions 2024

Key Aspects

🎓 University of St Andrews Medicine Interview Questions & Topics for 2024 entry

The School has a limited number of interview places (approximately 500). To be considered for an interview, applicants must have:

• a strong academic record

• a positive reference

• relevant, medically related work experience (see 'qualities and experience' on the entry requirements page).

At the interview, you will be expected to demonstrate that you have an understanding of medicine as a career and that you appreciate the realities of working in a caring profession. Your communication and interpersonal skills will be assessed at each station, and at least one station will involve role-play and interaction with an actor. You may also be assessed on things such as critical thinking, reflection and your ability to discuss ethical issues.

Interview Questions / Topics

• Medicine as a Career

• Caring qualities

• Communication

• Interpersonal Skills

• Roleplay

• Ethical Scenario

❓ St Andrews Medical Interview Past Questions 2024  Entry & 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.

Medicine As A Career

1. Why medicine?

2. Why St Andrews?

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 St Andrews 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 St Andrews course help you towards this?

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

Caring Qualities

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 St Andrews?

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 & Role Plays

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. Understanding of communication techniques needed for different people

2. Data interpretation questions: explain what this graph shows

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

🗣️ St Andrews Medicine Interview Tips for 2024 entry

1. Ethical Scenarios - St Andrews 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. Practice Role Plays: Role plays are unique to medicine interviews and so common at St Andrews. 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.

3. Learn Medical Ethics & NHS Hot Topics - it is extremely likely that you will be asked about medical ethics at a medicine interview at St Andrew's, 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.

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

6. Personal Attributes - St Andrews 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. MMI Stations - remember that each MMI station at St Andrews 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.

10. Know the St Andrews 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 St Andrews - this can be an advantage!

11. Know the local area - St Andrews is in a diverse region of Scotland, with a number of local factors and diseases that differentiate the midlands 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 St Andrews university medical centre to support students. How might this impact healthcare provision in the area?

12. Reflect Well - the St Andrews 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. 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 St Andrew's - 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 St Andrew's 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 - St Andrews 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.