Ace Your Med School Interview: Organ Transplant Dilemma | PostGradMedic

hello ladies and gentlemen oli here and welcome back to the channel today I am presenting you with another sample interview question so suppose for me for one second that you are a surgical consultant in charge of a transplant waiting list it's your job to assign where the organs that your department gets go to and a liver has just become available and in your Hospital there are currently two patients which urgently need a liver there's a 14 year old girl and a 33 year old man who is a regular drinker who has two infants children to whom do you give the liver so this is a pretty dire situation because no matter obviously which one you choose somebody is going to die but obviously the likelihood is that without the transplant both of them would die and the fact that you've only got one means that you at least can potentially save one so how do we assess these situations in terms of a med school interview how do you decide where it's gonna go the key with these is that your interviewer knows it's a very very difficult question and it's not about reaching the right answer it's about seeing how you react under pressure when forced to make a very difficult decision quickly so there are two things that you could immediately do which spring to mind the first would be to check that both of them are in fact biological matches for the donor liver if one of them isn't on neither of them are that ends this dispute immediately the problem could not go further beyond that and mechanical factors would probably be the second consideration due the size and shape of the liver match either of the patients particularly well or equally is it unsuitable for one of them for example if you look at me I'm quite a sort of slim build tallish guy a liver from a faulty stone man would probably not fit me very well just as my liver would not be a good match for him and the other element as far as mechanical factors go is are there any circumstances that would make the transplant more difficult to perform in one of the patients so for example if one of had haemophilia as my uncle does for example that would make any intensive surgery like a transplant much more difficult it would require a lot of specialist equipment and factors like that obviously might affect the long-term prognosis for either patient should the transplant even be successful at all so there are then naturally an enormous number of sort of social circumstances that you'd want to begin assessing so for example we were told in the question that the 33 year old man is a drinker it doesn't say how much he drinks just says a regular drinker so he might not be a binge drinker that information is not given for the teenage girl so might the teenage girl with her lack of obvious drinking might she be more responsible with the liver if you had good evidence that the man was a binge drinker that would suggest that she is a potential better match for that liver and I'm reaching a bit here given the limited as a design of the question but it's important to demonstrate to the interviewer that you recognize that there are so many of these other factors that could be taken into consideration but then the biggie perhaps the most important way that you could approach this is to talk about quality of life which of the patients stands to gain the most from the transplant intervention with regards to their long-term prognosis as opposed and not doing anything at all and this is naturally very difficult to measure but the most common way this is done is via a metric called the quality adjusted life year and this is a complicated calculation I will go into in another video it really deserves its own discussion but essentially the two factors that play into this of a number of years lived essentially and the other one is the fitness if you like within that year and these things are basically multiplied together so a year that perfect health gives the maximum score and then a lower number of years would reduce that score and living those years out at a lower level of health if you had broken bones or chronic pain or something would also lower the score so as I said you want to know who would live the highest number of years with the highest level of health so obviously if we make a very basic assessment the teenage girl has much longer to potentially live given that she's younger she's less than half the age of the male patient and women on average live longer than men anyway but you obviously have no idea what the damage would be like if something were to go wrong during her operation that maybe wouldn't go wrong if you are operating on the father and you might also want to consider the impacts of your choice on other people for example the parents of the teenage girl rightly or wrongly the death of children teenagers and young people in general I think is seen as not worse but it's it's more traumatic seemingly to a larger number of people than when somebody who maybe 70 passes away I think because of that potential life that they could have lived so her parents would probably take it very very badly if she were to die they'd be very angry probably if he didn't get the liver but also the man has two infant children what is their quality of life going to be without their father this is where it can get very very difficult because remember that you're only dealing with the two patients your responsibility is to do the best you can for both the teenage girl and the father with the resources you have available the extended families of those people are not your concern but it might play on your mind and ultimately remember with these questions that your interviewer is not looking for you to choose the right answer as in this case very often they are designed such that there is no correct answer do be sure to avoid jumping to one conclusion or the other extremely quickly because even if you've got it all worked out in your own mind to an interviewer that will suggest that you haven't thought it through very carefully be slow and deliberate with what say it's supposed to be difficult assess the situation as thoroughly as you can and consider and tell your interviewer about as many factors as you can think of that are relevant when the time is running out do choose an answer because somebody has got to get that liver it's got to go somewhere they don't last forever and you might as well make the best use of it you can provide a solid reasoning as you can to back up your choice but always communicate that there will be perfectly valid arguments on both sides so that's it guys we have once again reached the end of another sample interview answer question here on the channel I hope you've enjoyed it if there are things that you'd like me to add to the online article I haven't mentioned in this video let me know in the comments or get in touch through the website it's designed to be a collaborative platform the whole purpose of this website this platform is to be collaborative and to provide helpful resources to as many people as possible so if you'd like to see more sample answers just like this please be sure to hit that subscribe button and check out more videos on the channel if you'd like to see more hints and tips articles unser guides and a bank of sample questions go ahead and visit post-grad Medicom for more free resources just like this take care and I will see you in another video bye bye for now you [Music]

Channel: Ollie Burton

Views: 15,587

Rating: 4.9730339 out of 5

Keywords: ollie, burton, ollie burton, postgradmedic, medicine, medical school, med school, vlog, blog, ollieplays, ollieguitar, graduate entry medicine, university, education, diary, ethics, organ transplant, ace your med school interview, med school interview, medical interview

Id: LhfB60NDyR8

Length: 7min 59sec (479 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 25 2017