Course Introduction and the Interview Day

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Ease in to the Project Med School Interview Course with a simple introduction by learning about interview formats and structures, and exploring the differences between traditional panel interviews and MMI (multiple mini interviews). Gain an appreciation of what to expect on the interview day itself and the common distractions and pitfalls candidates face.

Why medicine? And general interview questions

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Hit the ground running with innovative answers and approaches to classic interview questions. Convince the medical school not only that you're the right fit for them, but they're the right fit for you.

Qualities of a Good Doctor

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To convince the interviewers you'll be a good doctor, you have to know the qualities of a good doctor inside out and fine-tune your answers to demonstrate those qualities at every opportunity. Learn what it means to be a good team player and a leader, while exploring how to effectively convey your compatibility with the NHS values of a caring nature, good communication skills, empathy and insight, ethical awareness, responsibility, motivation for and awareness of the challenges of a medical career, and resilience.

We will apply those concepts practically, going through worked examples of effective teamwork and leadership in a healthcare setting and giving you the tools and ideas to link them to your own experiences and talents.

Situational questions and the *STARR* method

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Learn how to answer "tell me about a time when..." questions. These are interviewers' favourites to scope out your personal qualities and achievements, your problem solving abilities, and your willingness to constructively reflect and turn reflection into learning and improvement.

We will go step by step through the STARR method, a template that will enable to hit all domains in the interviewer's mark scheme, then apply it to worked practical scenarios both in healthcare settings you might have witnessed in your work experience, and in your own personal life

Medical Ethics

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A comprehensive guide to the ethical principles that govern modern medical practice. We will define the key tenets of medical ethics and study them in context including vital concepts such as capacity, consent and confidentiality. After scrutinising landmark legal battles and court rulings which have shaped the landscape of 21st century medical ethics and the patient-doctor relationship, we will deploy our learned concepts in practice, working through ethical dilemmas that you are likely to encounter in your interview, and how best to answer them while staying true to your own beliefs. Throughout the module, we will use well-known ethical debates to illustrate each ethical concept, such as abortion, assisted dying and mandatory vaccination; topics which are commonly visited at interview.

NHS Key Topics

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Part 1: NHS Structure and Policy

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Discover the history of the NHS from its ideological conception, and appreciate the structure of the NHS from both a funding and policy perspective. We will discuss key policy changes and contracts such as the 2019 GP Contract and the 2016 Junior Doctors Contract, linking them to the key policy aims of the 2019 NHS Long Term Plan. We will discuss the feasibility of this new NHS policy direction through worked examples and consider the changes that might need to be enacted to achieve its goals. We will explore the reasons for the junior doctors strike of 2016, evaluate their impact and make judgements on their outcome, framing this in the context of the ethical dilemma of a doctor's right to strike and building on your knowledge of medical ethics from Module 4.

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Why is an ageing population and social care so important for the NHS going forward? What is the new funding model for adult social care and is it fair? How can we incentivise healthy lifestyles and would an obesity tax be morally justifiable?

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Part 2: Scandals and Controversy

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Interviewers want to know if you have your finger on the pulse when it comes to high profile media regarding the NHS. 

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There's no shortage of controversial cases or failings in patient care that are reported in the news. Scrutinise the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust scandal and the resultant inquiries. Consider the implications of the criminal conviction of paediatrician Dr. Bawa-Garba and her subsequent acquittal and reinstatement to the medical register, linking this case to the topic of BAME doctors in the NHS and the key reports in disproportionality of referrals for fitness to practice that they face. 

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Use your knowledge of medical ethics gained in Module 4 not just to appreciate both sides of the argument in the Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans cases, but crucially to understand the legal principles which guided the courts' judgement. 

The COVID-19 Pandemic

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Appreciate the timeline of key events and public health policy during the pandemic, and understand why it that policy changed so drastically. Judge the government's response to COVID-19 through combining objective evidence with quotes from key policymakers explaining their strategy at different stages of the pandemic.  Get to grips with the concept of herd immunity and understand how vaccines work, learning how to articulate this in your interview. Rewind to the controversies of the MMR vaccine and understand how it still affects us today.

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Your tutor is a doctor who has worked through the COVID-19 pandemic with first hand experience on COVID-19 wards, admitting COVID-19 patients through the emergency department and reviewing them in the intensive care unit (ICU). Show the interviewers your appreciation for how the pandemic affected doctors and NHS staff far beyond their day to day work.

Communication Skills

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The best way to learn communication skills is to practice communicating, but to do so without the theory and templates we will study would be to do so blind, hoping that you hit the interviewer's mark scheme domains by chance.

We will use templates designed by top universities to tackle the most challenging of communications skills scenarios, such as breaking bad news to a patient and dealing with an angry relative. Again, we'll link back to the ethical principles we learnt in Module 4 which will give us the legal authority to politely disagree with patient relatives when appropriate. We'll adapt these templates to hit as many mark scheme domains as we can, and you'll be presented with reproducible ways of gaining marks in communication stations even before you've begun to address the specific scenario in question.

Once you've got the theory under your belt and the templates engrained in your mind, book in for a 1 to 1 mock interview with the Project Med School doctor to put it into practice.

Quickfire Questions

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Don't let a deceptively easy question make you appear like you're not the fantastic candidate you truly are having done all this interview prep!

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We'll go through a number of common medical conditions, how they arise and how we treat them as doctors, in order to make sure you don't stumble over your words when asked "what's a heart attack?"

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Armed with this new knowledge, we'll discuss some strategies you can deploy in your interview to bring the conversation around to your strengths, closing with some tactical advice on how you can dictate the direction of interview through your response to open questions and situational questions that we studied in Module 3.