MEDICINE MOCK INTERVIEW | Answering common questions

hello everybody welcome back to the medical projects youtube channel if you are new around here my name is olivia and i am a second year medical student at king's college london and here on the medical projects youtube channel we release videos every single week detailing our best bits of advice to ensure that you get your dream spot at medical school so if you like the sound of that do make sure you subscribe to our channel turn the notification bell on so that you can be notified every time we post and make sure you give this video a big thumbs up because that always helps us out so today's video is going to be a really fun one it's actually very highly requested because a lot of you guys have said can we show you a kind of mock mmi style interview or help you answer some really common interview questions and as i always say we always listen to you guys and we take your video suggestions on board and so that is what we are going to be doing today my flatmate lizzie very kindly agreed to let me interview her over zoom so i'm going to be asking her five very common medicine interview questions so that you can get a bit of a feel for how you should answer she's a very strong candidate she's also a graduate from cambridge university so big up lizzie everyone let's give her a lot of love in the comments down below because she very kindly offered to help me with this video i've tried to pick questions which cover certain themes within a medicine interview so we've got some ethics in there we've got some exploring your general motivation for studying medicine in there we decided to do this over zoom because we wanted to simulate what a mmi might look like this year and of course a lot of you guys will be having these online due to the pandemic and so i hope you guys will find this mock interview very useful do let us know what you think of it in the comments down below so without further ado here is a taste of some of the questions that you might come across in your own medicine interviews elizabeth your first question today is why medicine i think for me i'm really interested in helping people and having like a career where i can actively see like the difference that i make in the world and so when i was looking into medicine and other healthcare roles um i looked into other um roles that support doctors like nursing and parent paramedics and but i think medicine kind of stood out for me in like the in the ability to diagnose and have that kind of um it's a bit like a detective story where you can work out exactly what is wrong with the patient and come to the conclusion of of how best to treat them and and i think i really value the the work that um people like paramedics do in in helping in really critical situations but i think the breadth of medicine was really um something that kind of drew me towards that in particular and yeah yeah great and as you mentioned there are many different healthcare staff members so why not nursing because they have a similar kind of patient facing role um so what made you decide that actually i want to be a doctor instead um so i looked into nursing and and i think there's a lot of capacity now actually in nursing to learn a lot more about for example diagnosing and says lots of nurses in gp practices that also help with um uh taking consultations on their own and um supporting doctors in that way um but i think although the work is incredibly valuable that nurses do and i think for me i wanted something where i had that constant progression and was able to keep on learning keep on um looking into different spheres of medicine and and sort of have again like i said that kind of width of um knowledge yeah absolutely um and when it comes to being a doctor are there any aspects of medicine or becoming a doctor that you're worried about or you think might be downsides to the job oh yeah i think i think it's an incredibly taxing job both in terms of um the sort of hours that you do and and in terms of it being sort of emotionally draining as well as like all of the disadvantages that come with any sort of like person-facing role and it's some sometimes incredibly difficult to deal with people that are emotionally distressed and i think seeing seeing people who are very unwell um will be really quite difficult for me and but i'm hopeful that that's something that i will be able to talk to my colleagues about um and be able to sort of work through um and and continue to have sort of a i guess um like a sustainable career in that sense thank you for that so your second question is what in your opinion is your greatest weakness um so i think for me probably my greatest weakness is that i sometimes procrastinate quite a bit before starting a task um and i realize that that is something that sort of holds me back in being able to sort of fulfill my goals and as well as something that's sort of not isn't very helpful for medicine and given that there's lots of situations where things are time critical and so the way that i've started to try and think about that and having done some reading on sort of procrastination is that it's a lot easier to sort of write down the feelings behind that and then come to um sort of a conclusion that getting a task done and making sure it's it's done rather than like perfect is the best way to sort of go about it and so what i'm trying to do to work on that is um to ensure that i write down the critical tasks that i need to get done and sort of remind myself that like done is good enough and it's better than not done at all and yeah absolutely and so you mentioned that you like to write down the feelings behind that so is that something you do often and why do you think that reflection is an important skill as a doctor um that's an interesting question so i think um that is is important for me because it helps me see why i am procrastinating or why i'm not doing the job that i'm trying to get done and and i think that by looking at sort of the reasons behind that that allows me to sort of combat them rather than be distracted by the task itself and and i think reflection and sort of improvement is really critical in medicine because it allows um clinicians um to constantly be thinking about ways in which they can continue to develop their skills their communication and and given how fast-paced or how stressful a lot of medicine is you might not get that time while you're in a consultation it might be something that you have to think about afterwards and kind of consider how it might work if there was a different patient in the room or how you might have to sort of um change the way that you communicated with somebody if for for example english wasn't their first language yeah absolutely very valid points so elizabeth for your third question this is going to be a bit of an ethical dilemma as i'm sure you're aware we face many of these in medicine every single day and this one today concerns two patients that are both in need of a lung transplant the first is a 12 year old girl who has cystic fibrosis which is a chronic condition that affects your lungs and the second patient concerns a 62 year old chronic smoker who has a wife and two children and he has very damaged lungs from smoking so who in your opinion should get the organ because there is only one organ available well obviously that's a really difficult and horrible situation and but it does sort of go to show that there sort of are decisions being made where resources have to be put one way and not another and so i don't have an immediate answer but i'll if you don't mind i'm gonna work through what i'm thinking and then hopefully i'll come to a conclusion um so i guess in terms of the ethical principles behind sort of medicine and there's um autonomy which is like um the patient's right to choose and so in terms of considering both of the patients you'd need to make sure that both of them would want a lung transplant and would be like fully able to carry on with the follow-up and and come to appointments and have that sort of i guess that ability to to choose between treatments as well if they're offered different types of treatments and i'm afraid i don't know about all of the different types of treatments that they might have but there may well be that there for one of the patients um for example the um the older man there might be treatments available that have quite a lot of evidence based um theory behind them that might be um a good alternative for treating his um his lung condition um and there might not be alternatives for the younger girl so i guess considering other options as well and would be one of the ways that i'd sort of come to a conclusion and i guess as well it's probably worth saying that i think i would want to discuss this with other people i think this is something that um medicine is about teamwork and like multidisciplinary um teamwork and i think this is something where having the input of people that for example a gp that might know both patients better than i might would also be a really good way of sort of assessing um their current like prognosis and so um um and also ensuring that um we sort of know about the support that they have to help after that transplant or not and i think it's worth saying as well that um that medicine works on sort of non-maleficence and beneficence so doing the right thing and trying not to do harm so it that would be one of the reasons why as well i would consider what other options the patients have we want to reduce the harm that occurs to the patient that doesn't get the lung transplant and support their sort of recovery and and health in as many ways as we can as well and so it might be things like helping the man to stop smoking which would still reduce his um the symptoms hopefully of his lung condition and and also like giving support in school for the child that has cystic fibrosis and and then in terms of justice i think it's worth saying that it it shouldn't matter like who the patient is so the fact that um for example this man was smoking doesn't mean that he doesn't have sort of shouldn't have equal access and right to the same sort of health care and that his treatment and his health is is as important as somebody else's and so i think it's a it's obviously a really difficult decision and and i think there's other factors to consider sort of like the age of the child and so they might have a lot longer in um sort of life expectancy if they have the lung transplant as compared to um the older gentleman who might not have as long in his life anyway um and it might be that um but then it's i guess there's other considerations such as he has a wife and child who um he might be supporting um and obviously um everybody is incredibly important in their social spheres as well and so it's it's a really hard situation and but i think given the the age of the patients i would probably give it to the younger to the child who was suffering with cystic fibrosis if other considerations couldn't and sort of if there were no other treatments available yeah absolutely i think as you mentioned it's a very difficult scenario and i don't think there is any right or wrong answer but as you highlighted it's so important that we don't discriminate based on you know the fact that he is a smoker and you could argue it's a self-inflicted disease because that's not how we make decisions in medicine at all and we treat people with equal fairness no matter what so really really nice answer thank you okay so moving on to your fourth question i want to show you an object and you're going to describe to me what that object is and how i use it because let's pretend i've never seen this object before what is this and how would you explain how to use it to me so um that is um it's called a mobile phone um or a phone um and it is essentially a device that allows people to communicate um so um that looked like a phone that had a touch screen so you would switch it on and open it up and what it allows you to do is if you have one of these and somebody else who's a long distance away from you has one of these you'll be able to call each other and speak through it as though you're having a conversation like we are now and it is also something that has developed over time so used to be um something that worked using telephone wires and would have to be plugged into um sort of the sockets but now works on satellite technology and so allows you to communicate over long distances or short ones and as well as sort of being something that you can speak to people through and it's also a device that allows for many other different activities such as taking photos um listening to music by using um headphones which sort of plug into your ears so you can hear through those um and um by connecting to the internet so you might be able to ask a question of your phone for example or search for nearby restaurants so that would involve opening up the internet function and typing in what your request is so thank you for explaining to me how to use this object that i showed you why do you think i asked you to do that um so i imagine it's because um communication is like a pivotal skill in medicine and as um doctors we would have to communicate with not only other doctors and patients but of course like members of the multi-disciplinary team so nurses paramedics um and i guess families as well as um for certain doctors sort of marketing in public health campaigns and and communication is sort of the essence of making sure that um you are providing like good care to your patients because if they don't feel comfortable telling you things and you can't explain things to them then they don't know what kind of treatment they're on they might not um sort of understand their condition properly or how to manage it um and you might not be able to communicate what they're sort of telling you to other doctors or nurses that might need that to sort of continue or um sort of help manage their care as well yeah absolutely okay so moving on to your final question what i want to ask you is why kings why have you chosen this medical school we have so many in london so vikings so i think for me i was really interested by kings because of like the structure of the course and it's um a course that gives opportunity for um things like dissection um and i know that you start seeing patients and being sort of like in clinics in second year um which is something that i really wanted because i know that for me it's really important that i um improve sort of my communication skills and and get used to being in that working environment quite early on and i think also i really wanted to study in london because it's such a vibrant and exciting city and but like you said there's so many medical schools in london so i think for me kings was the one that kind of like offered the course that i want and and i think has lots of opportunity for things like extracurricular activities and and lots of um sort of places nearby as well that i'd like to visit and i was also quite interested by the way that you teach anatomy which i know is done through dissection and which i think would be really good for me because i kind of learn in a very practical way and and it has a really good research reputation as well and i know that kids bring out lots of papers and they um sort of have a lot of research going on and i think as doctors well and for me i would like to get involved in that and so being somewhere where there's those sorts of opportunities to learn and through that kind of active involvement is something that i really like so that was the mock mmi i really hope you guys have found this useful and you thought about some of the ways that lizzy approached the questions if you like this video and would like some more similar videos to this do let us know in the comments down below if you haven't already do once again make sure you have subscribed to our youtube channel give this video a like and let us know any other videos you would like to see in 2021 because we have a lot of content planned for you guys i'd also like to point out that here on medical projects we do offer a virtual mock mmi so if that's something you're interested in and if you'd like to get an edge for your real interview do definitely make sure to check that out thank you guys so much for watching i hope you enjoyed and i'll see you in next week's video bye

Channel: Medical Projects

Views: 70,026

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Id: YH6FiZAWKwo

Length: 18min 57sec (1137 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 05 2021