Free practice questions for the Brighton & Sussex (BSMS) medicine interview, with the interview format taken from the university's own admissions pages.
Brighton and Sussex runs a values based MMI and lets you choose your format for 2027 entry: in person in early December 2026 or early January 2027, or online by Zoom in late January or early February 2027. Photo ID is compulsory at the start. BSMS asks applicants to read the Medical Schools Council core values and attributes guidance because the questions are built on it, and it never uses the personal statement at any stage. Offers are decided by the Admissions Review Group after the MMI. Check your invitation for current timings.
Original MedicHut practice questions. Real interviews may differ.
You are about to start a five-year medical degree at a university you chose partly because of its emphasis on early patient contact.
1. What is the main reason you want to become a doctor rather than pursue another caring profession?
2. How do you expect your motivation to be tested during the degree?
3. What would you do if, partway through year one, your enthusiasm dropped noticeably?
Follow-up: Suppose a family member asked why you did not choose a shorter healthcare course instead. How would you answer?
Many applicants describe wanting to "make a difference" as their reason for applying to medicine.
1. What makes your own reason more specific than this general phrase?
2. What single experience best illustrates your motivation?
3. How would you explain this motivation to a patient who asked you directly?
Follow-up: If you discovered you preferred research to direct patient contact, would that change your view of your own motivation?
Medical training combines long hours of study with direct responsibility for people's wellbeing.
1. What part of this combination appeals to you most?
2. What part do you expect to find hardest?
3. How have you prepared yourself for the harder part?
Follow-up: A friend says they think you are only interested in the status of being a doctor. How would you respond?
BSMS is a partnership between two universities, Brighton and Sussex, with a focus on community-based and early clinical learning.
1. Why does an early focus on patients, rather than years of classroom-only study, suit your reasons for applying?
2. What specific benefit do you expect from this early exposure?
3. What risk, if any, does early patient contact carry for a first-year student?
Follow-up: If your first clinical contact was less positive than you expected, how would that affect your motivation?
Training to become a doctor takes many years before independent practice is possible.
1. What keeps your motivation steady over a long and uncertain timeline?
2. How will you know if your motivation is genuinely weakening rather than just a bad week?
3. What would you do if you reached that point?
Follow-up: If you were offered a shorter, well-paid healthcare role today, would you take it instead of continuing towards medicine?
BSMS trains students jointly across the Universities of Brighton and Sussex and the wider Sussex healthcare community.
1. What have you found out about how BSMS structures its course compared with a single-university medical school?
2. Why does this joint structure appeal to you?
3. What would you still want to find out before starting?
Follow-up: If you found the joint structure made some administrative processes slower, how would you adapt?
BSMS places strong emphasis on community-based medicine and placements across Sussex.
1. Why might training across a range of community settings matter for a future doctor?
2. What specific feature of Sussex's population or geography do you think shapes the course?
3. What challenge do you expect from moving between different placement sites?
Follow-up: If your placement site changed at short notice, how would you manage the disruption?
You have been invited to interview at BSMS and at another medical school in the same window.
1. What specific features of BSMS would you mention if asked to compare it with another medical school?
2. How did you research these features?
3. What would be the biggest personal adjustment in moving to Brighton or Sussex for your studies?
Follow-up: If you were offered both places, what single piece of information would most influence your decision?
BSMS interviews are conducted as an MMI with five separate discussions on different topics.
1. Why do you think a medical school uses several short stations rather than one long interview?
2. What do you think this format is trying to assess that a single interview might miss?
3. How will you prepare to reset your focus between stations?
Follow-up: If you felt you had answered one station poorly, how would you approach the next one?
BSMS was established as a partnership intended to widen access to medicine in the South East of England.
1. Why do you think widening access to medicine in a particular region matters?
2. What would you personally bring to a cohort drawn from a wide range of backgrounds?
3. How might training in this kind of environment shape how you practise later?
Follow-up: How would you respond if a fellow student assumed your path into medicine had been easier than theirs?
Think about a period of work experience, paid work, or volunteering in a healthcare or caring setting.
1. Describe a specific moment that showed you what day-to-day clinical work is really like.
2. What surprised you about this moment?
3. How has it shaped your expectations of medical training?
Follow-up: What would you have done if the placement had been cancelled before you could gain this insight?
During observation in a healthcare setting, you may have noticed differences in how professionals communicated with patients of different ages or backgrounds.
1. What specific difference did you notice, or would you expect to notice?
2. Why might adapting communication style matter for patient outcomes?
3. What did this teach you about your own communication style?
Follow-up: How would you check whether your communication was actually working, rather than just assuming it was?
You have spent time observing a multidisciplinary team, such as a GP practice or hospital ward.
1. Describe one example of effective collaboration you observed or would expect to see.
2. What roles depended on each other in that example?
3. What did this teach you about the limits of a doctor's individual role?
Follow-up: If you saw two team members disagree in front of a patient, what would good practice look like?
Reflect on a time, inside or outside healthcare, when something did not go as planned.
1. What was the situation and what went wrong?
2. What specific insight into your own resilience did you gain?
3. How did this change how you now prepare for setbacks?
Follow-up: If a similar setback happened again next month, what would you do differently?
Many applicants rely on virtual work experience or shadowing schemes rather than long placements.
1. What is the most useful thing you learned from virtual or short-term work experience?
2. What can virtual work experience not teach you, compared with being physically present?
3. How do you plan to make up for that gap once you start clinical placements?
Follow-up: A friend tells you virtual work experience is 'not real' and should not count. How would you respond?
Honesty and self-awareness about limitations are core attributes expected of medical students.
1. What do you consider your biggest area for improvement as a future medical student?
2. Give a specific example of when this has affected you.
3. What steps are you taking to address it before starting university?
Follow-up: How would you feel if a tutor identified this same weakness publicly during a small group session?
Doctors are expected to maintain high standards of integrity even under pressure.
1. Describe a time you were tempted to cut corners, and what you did.
2. Why does integrity matter even in small, low-stakes situations?
3. How do you plan to maintain this standard when workload increases at medical school?
Follow-up: What would you do if you saw a fellow student cutting corners in a way that did not affect anyone directly?
Resilience is often listed as a key quality for coping with the demands of medical training.
1. What is the most difficult period you have managed through so far?
2. What specific strategies helped you get through it?
3. How do you expect medical school to test your resilience differently from before?
Follow-up: If you felt overwhelmed in your first term, who would you turn to first and why?
Medical students are expected to manage their own wellbeing while meeting academic and clinical demands.
1. What do you currently do to look after your own wellbeing?
2. How might this need to change once you are balancing study, placements and personal life?
3. What would make you recognise that you needed extra support?
Follow-up: A fellow student confides that they are struggling but asks you to keep it quiet. What would you do?
Being adaptable is important given the range of settings BSMS students train in across Sussex.
1. Describe a time you had to adapt quickly to an unfamiliar environment or group of people.
2. What made the adjustment difficult?
3. What did you learn about your own approach to change?
Follow-up: If you were moved to a placement site far from your usual support network, how would you adapt?
You are part of a small group project where one member consistently misses deadlines, affecting the whole team.
1. How would you first approach this situation?
2. What would you say to the group as a whole, if anything?
3. How would you balance supporting this person with meeting the group's deadline?
Follow-up: The group member reveals they have been dealing with a personal crisis. Does this change your approach?
Effective teams in healthcare rely on clear roles and mutual respect between members of different professions.
1. Describe a team you have been part of, in any setting, and your specific role within it.
2. What made that team work well or poorly?
3. What would you change about your own contribution if you could repeat the experience?
Follow-up: If a more experienced team member dismissed your idea without discussion, how would you respond?
Leadership in medicine often means taking responsibility without having formal authority over colleagues.
1. Describe a time you led, or tried to lead, a group without being formally in charge.
2. What challenges did you face in getting others to follow your lead?
3. What would you do differently next time?
Follow-up: If a colleague questioned your right to take the lead in a group task, how would you handle it?
You are leading a small student society event and two helpers both think they are in charge of the same task.
1. How would you resolve the confusion on the day itself?
2. How would you prevent this happening again in future events?
3. What does this scenario suggest about communication within teams?
Follow-up: One of the two helpers feels publicly embarrassed by how the mix-up was resolved. What would you do?
A friend studying a different subject tells you they think medical students only care about grades and have little time for anyone else.
1. How would you respond to this comment in conversation?
2. What specific evidence could you offer to address their concern?
3. How would you check that your response had actually changed their view, rather than just ending the conversation?
Follow-up: If your friend said this in front of a group of mutual friends, would your approach to responding change?
You are asked to explain a common medical procedure, such as having a blood test, to someone with no medical background.
1. Explain, in plain English as if speaking to that person directly, what a blood test involves and why it might be done.
2. What language would you deliberately avoid using?
3. How would you check they had understood?
Follow-up: The person tells you they are frightened of needles after hearing your explanation. What would you say next?
You need to tell a classmate, in a way they can accept, that their recent contribution to a shared project was below the standard expected.
1. How would you open this conversation?
2. What specific feedback would you give, and how would you phrase it constructively?
3. How would you end the conversation so the relationship remains positive?
Follow-up: The classmate becomes defensive and says you are being unfair. How would you respond in the moment?
An older relative asks you to explain, in simple terms, why doctors sometimes recommend not treating a condition immediately and instead "watching and waiting".
1. Explain this concept to them as you would in conversation.
2. What concerns might they have about this approach, and how would you address them?
3. How would you make sure your explanation did not sound dismissive of their worry?
Follow-up: They tell you a friend was harmed by a 'watch and wait' approach. How would you respond to that concern?
A 16-year-old patient asks a doctor not to tell their parents about a diagnosis, but the parents are waiting outside and will ask questions directly.
1. What are the key ethical issues the doctor needs to consider here?
2. How would you expect the doctor to balance the patient's wishes with the parents' concern?
3. What might change the doctor's approach, such as the nature of the diagnosis?
Follow-up: The parents become angry and accuse the doctor of hiding information from them. How should the doctor respond?
A patient tells their doctor they have been taking a family member's leftover prescription medication to save money.
1. What are the immediate concerns a doctor should raise with this patient?
2. How would you balance the patient's financial pressures with the risks involved?
3. What wider issue does this situation point to beyond this one patient?
Follow-up: The patient says they cannot afford their own prescription at all. What should the doctor do next?
A hospital has limited capacity and must decide which of two patients needing a particular treatment receives it first.
1. What factors should be considered in making this kind of decision, using illustrative figures: Patient A is 45 with a 70% chance of full recovery if treated within 24 hours, Patient B is 72 with a 40% chance of full recovery if treated within 24 hours. Both will likely decline further if treatment is delayed by more than 48 hours.
2. Does age alone justify prioritising one patient over the other? Why or why not?
3. What other illustrative figures, such as time since onset of symptoms or presence of other conditions, might change this decision?
Follow-up: Suppose new illustrative figures showed Patient B's recovery chance rises to 65% with a specific extra treatment. Does this change your reasoning?
A colleague confides in a medical student that they have made a small error in a patient's notes but decided not to report it because it caused no harm.
1. What are the competing considerations the student faces here?
2. Should the size of the error or the fact that no harm occurred affect what the student does?
3. What would you expect good practice to look like in this situation?
Follow-up: The colleague asks the student directly to keep this between them. How should the student respond?
A patient with capacity refuses a treatment that doctors believe gives them the best chance of recovery.
1. What ethical principle is most relevant to how the doctor should respond?
2. How should the doctor balance respecting this decision with their own concern for the patient's wellbeing?
3. What would change if the patient were a minor rather than an adult?
Follow-up: The patient's family insists the doctor should treat the patient anyway, against their wishes. How should the doctor respond?
The NHS has reported significant waiting list pressures for routine and planned care in recent years.
1. What do you understand to be the main causes of long waiting lists for planned treatment?
2. What trade-offs might be involved in trying to reduce waiting lists quickly?
3. What role, if any, do you think individual patients and the public can play in easing pressure on NHS services?
Follow-up: If a local hospital decided to prioritise shorter, simpler procedures to clear its waiting list faster, what concerns might this raise?
There has been ongoing public and political debate about the long-term funding model of the NHS.
1. What do you understand about how the NHS is currently funded?
2. What might be an advantage and a disadvantage of moving towards a different funding model?
3. Why do you think healthcare funding is such a widely debated public issue?
Follow-up: A friend argues that introducing charges for GP appointments would reduce unnecessary visits. How would you respond to this view?
Workforce shortages, including in general practice and emergency medicine, have been widely reported as a pressure on the NHS.
1. What do you think are the main reasons behind workforce shortages in some specialties?
2. What impact might these shortages have on patient care?
3. What approaches might help retain more doctors in the NHS over the long term?
Follow-up: If you discovered during your training that the specialty you loved most was also the most understaffed, how would that affect your plans?
Social prescribing, where patients are referred to non-medical community support such as exercise groups or debt advice, has grown in recent years.
1. Why might social prescribing be a useful addition to traditional medical treatment?
2. What limitations might this approach have?
3. How does this reflect a broader understanding of what affects a person's health?
Follow-up: A patient tells you they do not want to be 'sent to a support group' and just want medicine. How would you respond?
Technology, including remote consultations and electronic health records, has become more common across the NHS.
1. What benefits might remote consultations offer patients and the health service?
2. What risks or limitations does this approach carry?
3. Which groups of patients might be disadvantaged by a shift towards more remote care?
Follow-up: An elderly patient tells you they feel 'forgotten' because every appointment is now done over the phone. How would you respond?
Vaccination programmes rely on a high proportion of the population being immunised to protect those who cannot be vaccinated.
1. In simple terms, explain what herd immunity means and why it matters.
2. Why might some vaccination programmes struggle to reach the coverage needed for herd immunity?
3. What role, if any, should doctors play in addressing public hesitancy about vaccines?
Follow-up: A patient tells you they read online that vaccines are unnecessary because disease rates are already low. How would you respond?
Antibiotic resistance is frequently raised as a significant challenge for modern medicine.
1. In simple terms, explain why overuse of antibiotics contributes to resistance.
2. What practical steps can doctors take to reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescribing?
3. Why might patients sometimes expect or request antibiotics even when they are not appropriate?
Follow-up: A parent insists their child needs antibiotics for a viral infection. How would you handle this conversation?
Basic understanding of how clinical trials work underpins much of modern medical practice.
1. In simple terms, explain why a control group is used in a clinical trial.
2. Why might a trial use a placebo rather than no treatment at all for the control group?
3. What ethical considerations arise from using a placebo in a trial for a serious illness?
Follow-up: A participant in a trial wants to stop taking part halfway through. What should happen next?
Understanding risk is important when discussing test results or treatment options with patients.
1. Using these illustrative figures, a screening test is 90% accurate at detecting a disease that affects 1 in 1000 people, and also produces false positives in 5% of healthy people tested. If a patient tests positive, explain in simple terms why this does not mean they definitely have the disease.
2. Why is this kind of explanation important for patients making decisions about further tests?
3. How would you communicate this uncertainty to a worried patient without causing unnecessary alarm?
Follow-up: The patient asks you directly, 'so what are the chances I actually have it?' How would you answer in plain terms?
A GP practice is reviewing illustrative figures on missed appointments: 1200 appointments were booked last month, 180 were missed without cancellation, and missed appointments were most common among patients aged 18 to 30.
1. What does this data suggest about where to focus efforts to reduce missed appointments?
2. What additional illustrative figures would help you understand the causes more clearly?
3. Suggest two practical interventions the practice might trial, and how you would judge whether they worked.
Follow-up: After introducing a text reminder system, illustrative figures show missed appointments fell to 140 out of 1150 booked the following month. How would you interpret this change?
A hospital is comparing illustrative figures on infection rates across two wards over the same three month period: Ward A had 14 infections among 420 patients, Ward B had 9 infections among 410 patients.
1. Calculate the infection rate for each ward and compare them.
2. What other illustrative factors might explain the difference before concluding Ward A has worse infection control?
3. What steps would you suggest to investigate the difference further?
Follow-up: You learn Ward A treats mainly post-surgical patients with weaker immune systems. Does this change your interpretation?
A medical school is reviewing illustrative figures on interview performance: of 500 candidates interviewed, 320 scored above the pass mark, and candidates from state schools averaged a slightly lower mean score than candidates from independent schools.
1. What questions would you want answered before drawing any conclusions from this data?
2. What are the risks of making policy decisions based on this data alone?
3. What further illustrative data would help the school understand whether its process is fair?
Follow-up: Further illustrative figures show the gap disappears once UCAT scores are accounted for. How does this change your view?
You are given illustrative figures showing a clinic's patient satisfaction scores dropped from an average of 8.2 out of 10 to 6.5 out of 10 over six months, during which appointment lengths were reduced from 15 to 10 minutes to see more patients.
1. What is the most likely explanation suggested by this data, and what are its limits?
2. What other illustrative figures would help confirm or challenge this explanation?
3. What trade-offs would the clinic face if it reversed the appointment length change?
Follow-up: Illustrative figures also show staff turnover doubled in the same period. How does this affect your interpretation?
Think of a piece of feedback you received that was difficult to hear at the time.
1. What was the feedback, and why was it hard to accept initially?
2. How did your view of the feedback change over time, if at all?
3. How has this shaped the way you now respond to criticism?
Follow-up: If you received very similar feedback again in your first year of medical school, how would you respond differently this time?
Reflect on a decision you made that, looking back, you would make differently.
1. What was the decision and what led you to make it at the time?
2. What would you do differently now, and why?
3. What has this taught you about how you make decisions under pressure or uncertainty?
Follow-up: How would you apply this lesson the next time you have to make a quick decision with incomplete information?
Think about a time you worked with someone whose views or approach were very different from your own.
1. What was the difference, and how did it affect your working relationship?
2. What did you learn about managing disagreement constructively?
3. How do you think this experience will help you work within a diverse medical team?
Follow-up: If that same disagreement arose again now, what would you do differently from the start?
Consider a time when you had to adjust your plans after receiving new information partway through a task.
1. What was the situation and what new information changed things?
2. How did you decide what to adjust and what to keep the same?
3. What does this suggest about how you will cope with the uncertainty of clinical training?
Follow-up: If the new information had arrived too late to change anything, how would you have handled the outcome?
Brighton and Sussex uses this format for medicine: Values based MMI. Interviews may be in person or online.
Interview timing for Brighton and Sussex: December 2026 to February 2027, with offers from January to April 2027. Always check the university's own admissions pages for this year's dates.
Brighton and Sussex assesses: Core values and attributes for medicine, Communication, Ethical reasoning, Motivation.
No. They are 50 original MedicHut practice questions, written to match Brighton and Sussex's published interview format. Universities do not share their real questions, so your interview may differ.
No. Every question is free with no sign-up. A free account just lets you save your notes and progress across devices.
Brighton and Sussex medical school guide: entry requirements and interview advice
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