Medicine at University of Keele Medical School & Interview Questions 2024

Key Aspects

🎓 Keele Medicine Interview Questions & Topics 2024

The interview is not a test of candidates' academic knowledge. Candidates will not be asked questions directly related to their curriculum. 

The preinterview screening process operated by the School of Medicine (based on academic grading, the medicine personal statement and school/college reference) will already have assured that all candidates called to interview are of sufficient academic calibre. The purpose of the interview is to assess the candidate as a whole person.

This refers to what Keele used to look at interviews, we think that this is likely to still be relevant today. The interview, in addition to forming an overall impression of the student, will be assessed in particular the following areas:

• Ability to communicate. Communication skills are essential to the practice of almost all aspects of medicine. We expect candidates to be able to express their ideas clearly and coherently and to be able to follow a reasoned argument. Candidates who give spontaneous yet well-thought-out answers to questions are more likely to impress the interviewers than those who give obviously rehearsed and ‘coached’ responses. 

• Why does the candidate wish to be a doctor? This is an obvious but vital question. It is also the question to which candidates most frequently reply with a coached and practised answer. This is not to say that practised answers would entirely rule a candidate out of consideration, however, they are clearly not as impressive as answers which are spontaneous and show genuine flair and enthusiasm for the subject.

• Does the student have genuine outside interests? Candidates can expect to be asked at some length about their hobbies and interests, and other non-academic pursuits. Obviously, a starting point for these questions will be areas the candidate has mentioned in his/her personal statement. Clearly, this may lead to other areas but candidates should be aware that anything they write on their personal statement may be questioned at the interview. Thus candidates are advised to be careful when compiling their medicine personal statement and not to include a list of hobbies in which they have only a passing interest, merely to compile a list. Interviewers themselves have a wide range of interests, which often include many of those cited by candidates! The panel is not at all concerned as to exactly what candidates’ outside interests are: merely to assess whether they are able to talk about them with some degree of knowledge and enthusiasm.

• Previous caring experience. Any experience in a caring role will clearly be a topic raised by the interviewers. This role need not be in a medical environment. The interview is an opportunity for candidates to relate not only the facts and details of their role but also their emotional response to it, what it has taught them, and what they have gained from it.

• Matters of current interest. Candidates will not be expected to have detailed knowledge of medical or social issues. However, the panel will feel it reasonable to expect the candidate to have an intelligent layperson’s view on current issues related to health and society. Ethical problems may be raised for discussion but candidates should be reassured that neither the panel nor the School of Medicine will take a fixed position on any ethical issue. It is not the candidate’s ethical opinions that the panel will be interested in, but rather how coherently the candidate expresses those views.

In addition, interviewees will complete a separate mathematics test 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 in the interview.

❓ Keele Medical Interview Past Questions 2024 & 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 Keele?

3. What did you learn from your work experience?

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

5. What do you know about the Keele Medicine course? How is it taught?

6. Does our medicine course suit you?

7. Applying for medicine is a long and challenging process, much harder than applying to most other subjects. What keeps you motivated to pursue a career in medicine?

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

9. Why medicine and not dentistry or nursing?

10. Tell us about your volunteering

11. What are your hobbies?

12. What are the negatives of a career in medicine?

Personal Insight

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. Despite the cutting-edge advancements in medicine, it’s not always possible to cure the patient. How will you manage the emotional burden that carries?

8. How would your friends describe you?

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

10. What should a doctor do if the procedure they are required to perform goes against their faith?

11. How are sympathy and empathy different? Is any of them more important than the other in medicine?

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 Keele?

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

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. You are on your first clinical placement, the nurses are extremely busy and have asked you to help. What do you do?

5. Are the internet and easy access to medical information good for patient care?

6. Who would you give this organ to? [Prioritisation]

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

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

9. Can you think of a situation when lying to a patient would be acceptable and appropriate

10. A drug is available as 50mg/5ml: your patient’s prescription is for 75mg, how many ml will be given?

🗣️ University of Keele Medicine Interview Tips 2024

1. Work on your mental maths - If Keele decides to include their interview maths assessment as a part of the MMI, you want to have your maths skills on point. Refresh your GCSE maths and go through questions provided by Keele Medical School.

2. Have examples ready to use: many of the questions asked at Keele 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.

3. Personal Attributes - Keele is very likely to ask you about personal attributes during the MMI interview. As such it is paramount that you go through and learn these. Check out our 200+ interview question and answer guide for dealing with such interview questions. 

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. MMI Stations - remember that each MMI station at Keele 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.

7. Know the Keele Course - we would always recommend doing this for every university that you plan to apply to. Keele uses a spiral curriculum, which is a new type of course. How does this differ from other universities? What is their policy on intercalation? Have you any idea about what you would plan to intercalate in at Keele? Remember there is very early clinical exposure at Keele - this can be an advantage!

8. Know the local area - Keele is a diverse region of England, with a number of local factors and diseases that differentiate the Keele region from the rest of the UK. Ensure that you research both communicable and non-communicable diseases in the area. How might this impact healthcare provision in the area?

9. Reflect Well - the Keele 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.

10. Practice Role Plays: Role plays are unique to medicine MMI interviews as they do not tend to occur in panel interviews. 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.

11. 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.

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

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

14. 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.

15. Good Medical Practice - Keele 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.