Medicine at University of Sunderland Medical School & Interview Questions 2024

Key Aspects

🎓 The University of Sunderland Medicine Interview Questions & Topics for 2024 entry

For September 2024 entry, our multiple mini-interviews (MMIs) will take place in person, where candidates undertake a series of short interview stations. The stations will examine a range of skills and aptitudes. The format of stations may vary from a 1:1 traditional interview to a role-play.

The MMI assesses a range of attributes of applicants, including:

• Motivation/experiences informing your decision to pursue a medical career

• Empathy and insight

• Responsibilities and challenges of being a doctor

• Awareness of ethical issues in health and society

• Resilience

• Comprehension

• Effective communication

In addition, interviewees will complete a 40-minute online numeracy test at Sunderland. which will assess their ability to perform clinically relevant calculations. This is a pass/fail test. Interviewees who do not achieve the passing score will be unsuccessful at the interview.

❓ Sunderland Medical Interview Past Questions for 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.

Motivation to study medicine

1. Why medicine?

2. Why Sunderland? Why have you applied here?

3. What did you learn from your work experience?

4. Your best friend has lost her pet dog and she is heartbroken - have a conversation with her.

5. What makes you suited to Medicine?

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

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

8. What do you know about the Sunderland Medicine course? How is it taught?

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

10. Why medicine and not dentistry or nursing?

11. Tell us about your volunteering

12. What are your hobbies?

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

14. 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. When have you displayed great teamwork skills?

4. Have you ever been in charge of a group of people?

5. How do you manage stress?

6. What are the qualities of a good doctor?

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

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

9. What are your strengths and weaknesses?

10. How would your friends describe you?

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

12. Are you a good teacher?

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 Sunderland?

6. Why is it important to be aware of cultural differences when treating patients?

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. How might you persuade someone to take a medicine that they dont want to take?

6. If you notice that a colleague has turned up to work drunk, what would you do?

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

8. Your friends have already completed their St Georges Medical School Interview and are talking about it in the playground - what do you do?

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

Other Stations

1. Discuss the pros and cons of assisted dying. What is the difference between assisted dying and assisted suicide? Reflect on your performance in the group in front of everyone.

2. Discuss the pros and cons of a sugar tax. Each person must summarise their position at the end.

3. Antibiotic resistance. What would happen if they were banned tomorrow?

4. Advantages and disadvantages of free Wi-Fi in schools for 15-16 year olds

5. Understanding of communication techniques needed for different people

6. Data interpretation: explain what this graph shows

7. Talk us through this article

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

🗣️ Sunderland Medicine Interview Tips for 2024 entry

1. Practice, practice, practice for the numeracy test: The more you practice drug calculations, the more comfortable and confident you will become in dealing with them. Try to get your hands on as many practice questions as possible, and work through them at your own pace. You can also try timing yourself to see how quickly you can complete a set of questions, as this will help you get used to the time pressure of the test.

2. Focus on the basics: Make sure you have a solid understanding of the basic principles of drug calculations, such as units of measurement, ratios and proportions, and conversions. If you are struggling with a particular question, try breaking it down into smaller parts and working through each step methodically. Don't rush through the calculations or rely on guesswork, as this can lead to errors. Instead, take your time and double-check your answers to ensure they are accurate.

3. Ethical Scenarios - Sunderland 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

4. Practice Role Plays: Role plays are unique to medicine interviews and so common at Sunderland. 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.

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

6. Have examples ready to use: many of the questions asked at Sunderland 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.

7. 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.

8. Personal Attributes - Sunderland 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. MMI Stations - remember that each MMI station at Sunderland 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.

12. Know the Sunderland 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 Sunderland - this can be an advantage!

13. Know the local area - Sunderland is in a diverse region of England, 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 Sunderland university medical centre to support students. How might this impact healthcare provision in the area?

14. Reflect Well - the Sunderland 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.

15. 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.

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

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 - Sunderland 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.