Medicine at University of Sheffield Medical School & Interview Questions 2024

🎓The University of Sheffield Medicine Interview Questions & Topics 2024

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 interview preparation. 

The Medical School will interview approximately 1000 candidates for Medicine in 2023. The goal is to invite approximately 850 A100 Home applicants, approximately 100 A100 International applicants, and approximately 40-60 A101 applicants to interview. The Medical School uses Multiple Mini-Interviews (MMIs), which will take place between December 2023 and January 2024.

The MMIs consist of eight sections. If a candidate is invited to attend an interview, they will receive the questions with their invitation. 

The questions in these sections are typically based on the following areas:

• communication skills

• depth and breadth of interests (achievements in specific fields)

• evidence of commitment to caring

• knowledge of and interest in studying in Sheffield

• medical work experience/Extended Project Qualification

• motivation for medicine

• information processing skills

• understanding the nature of medicine

• values and attitudes

• outside interests

💯 Sheffield Medical MMI Interview Questions Scoring 2024

Each section in the interview is scored as follows:

• 5 Excellent

• 4 Good

• 3 Satisfactory

• 2 Borderline

• 1 Unsatisfactory

In addition to the eight sections in the interview, applicants' scores in the UCAT Situational Judgement Test (SJT) will be considered as a ninth virtual station. The UCAT SJT will contribute to the interview score as follows:

• 5 = 1st Quartile SJT = Excellent

• 4 = 2nd Quartile SJT = Good

• 3 = 3rd Quartile SJT = Satisfactory

• 2 = 4th Quartile SJT = Borderline

• 1 = Not applicable

The interviewed candidates can achieve a total score of 10-45 out of 45. This score is used to rank applicants and determine which ones will receive an offer. Successful applicants are expected to perform satisfactorily or better in each section of the interview. When ranking applicants, those who performed satisfactorily or better in every section are considered first.

The interviewers are drawn from a diverse group, including medical educationalists, senior medical professionals, biomedical scientists, senior hospital doctors, general practitioners, junior hospital doctors, senior nurses, senior pharmacists, medical students, and patients from the Patients as Educators program. 

The interviewers will not have read the applicants' personal statements, but some of the questions may be related to the types of things people typically write about in their UCAS personal statements. It is recommended that applicants prepare for the interview by reading the NHS Constitution, the General Medical Council's publication "Good Medical Practice," and by staying up-to-date with recent medical breakthroughs, ethical issues, and NHS politics.

There is no specific dress code for the interviews, but applicants are expected to dress professionally. The conduct of applicants will be assessed from the moment they log in for their interviews.

❓ Sheffield Medical Interview Past Questions 2024 + Likely Topics

While Sheffield previously provided questions that will come up at interview, they no longer do so. 

Motivation to study medicine

1. What inspired you to want to become a doctor?

2. Tell me about a patient that you saw during your work experience or volunteering who inspired you to find out more about what was wrong with them.

3. Do you think that non-emergency services should be provided 7 days a week in the NHS?

4. What did you learn from your work experience?

5. If you are successful in your application you may be spending 5 years living and studying in Sheffield. What can you tell me about the City of Sheffield and the University of Sheffield?

6. What do you know about the Sheffield MBChB curriculum?

7. Medical schools around the world receive far more applications than there are places. This means that many excellent applicants will receive no offers. If this happens to you, what will you do?

8. What is the role of a doctor within the MDT?

9. Why medicine and not dentistry or nursing?

10. Tell us about your volunteering

11. What is your understanding of good patient care?

Personal Insight

1. Why should patients trust you?

2. What are your best qualities?

3. How do you manage stress?

4. Tell us about a recent setback. How would you prevent the same thing from happening again?

5. What is empathy? Why is it important in medicine?

6. What are the qualities of a successful? Do you have them?

7. What is integrity? Why is it important in medicine?

8. Tell us about a project where you worked on your own. What would you do differently next time?

9. Studying medicine can be intense, so maintaining a work-life balance is important. How do you relax and unwind?

10. Medical students are selected from the best and the brightest students around the world. How will you cope with moving from an environment where you were one of the best students to one where everyone has a similar level of ability?

11. As a doctor you will have to break bad news and deal with things when they go wrong. How do you think you will cope with this emotionally?

NHS & Local Area

1. Tell us about something you have recently read that is related to medical ethics.

2. What changes would you make to the NHS if you could?

3. What are the NHS values and why are they important?

4. What is it like to be a doctor?

5. How do you deal with overpopulation?

6. Tell me about a time when you have made a positive impact on someone else’s life.

7. Based on your work or voluntary experiences, what do you think are the

8. challenges of delivering quality care to patients?

9. How do you think demonstrating respect and dignity impacts on patients?

Ethical Scenarios

1. Understanding of the four ethical principles

2. Understanding of the GMC’s good medical practice

3. What can you tell me about the General Medical Council’s code of conduct for

4. doctors?

5. Do you think it might ever be appropriate to breach a patient’s confidentiality? Can you give any examples?

6. While working at your Saturday job in a shop you find that one of your colleagues has arrived at work smelling of alcohol. They appear to be intoxicated, and you know that they drove to work. What actions would you take?

🗣️ Sheffield Medicine Interview Tips 2024

1. Ethical Scenarios - Sheffield 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

2. Practice Role Plays: Role plays are unique to medicine interviews and so common at Sheffield. 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.

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

4. Have examples ready to use: many of the questions asked at Sheffield 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.

5. 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.

6. Personal Attributes - Sheffield 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. MMI Stations - remember that each MMI station at Sheffield 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.

10. Know the Sheffield 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 Sheffield - this can be an advantage!

11. Know the local area - Sheffield 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 Sheffield university medical centre to support students. How might this impact healthcare provision in the area?

12. Reflect Well - the Sheffield 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.

13. 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.

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

15. 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.

16. Good Medical Practice - Sheffield 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.