Free practice questions for the Brunel medicine interview, with the interview format taken from the university's own admissions pages.
Brunel uses an asynchronous virtual MMI, meaning applicants record their answers rather than speaking to a live interviewer. There are six stations of seven minutes each, two minutes to read the scenario and five minutes to record your answer. You complete the stations in your own time within five days of the invitation and can take breaks between them. Each station is aligned to an attribute from Good Medical Practice and one assessor reviews your whole interview. Practising with recorded answers is a good way to prepare.
Original MedicHut practice questions. Real interviews may differ.
Medicine is a long course followed by many more years of training after graduation.
1. What single experience first made you consider medicine as a career?
2. How has your motivation changed, if at all, since you first thought about applying?
3. What will you do if, partway through medical school, you start to doubt your choice?
Follow-up: Record a one-minute response explaining why now, rather than five years ago or five years from now, is the right time for you to start this course.
Many applicants describe wanting to 'help people' as their main motivation.
1. What is a more specific reason, beyond helping people, that draws you to medicine rather than another caring profession?
2. How do you know this reason is realistic, based on what you have seen of the job?
3. What part of a doctor's daily work do you think you would find least enjoyable?
Follow-up: If you discovered during your first clinical placement that the daily reality did not match your expectations, what would you do?
Doctors are expected to keep learning throughout a career that can last over 30 years.
1. What about ongoing learning appeals to you?
2. What about it concerns you?
3. How do you plan to stay motivated during the less exciting parts of training, such as repetitive exam preparation?
Follow-up: Describe a time you kept working at something after your initial enthusiasm faded.
Reflect on your proudest achievement outside of academic study.
1. What was the achievement?
2. What personal qualities did it draw on?
3. How is it relevant to your motivation for a career in medicine?
Follow-up: Record your response to someone who argues that non-academic achievements are not relevant to becoming a good doctor.
Brunel Medical School emphasises early patient contact from Year 1 and the use of trained simulated patients and video-equipped consultation rooms to build communication skills early.
1. Why does learning clinical communication skills from your first year appeal to you?
2. What do you think you would find difficult about meeting real patients so early in your training?
3. What could you do to prepare yourself for this kind of early exposure?
Follow-up: Record your response as though explaining to a nervous younger sibling why starting with patients in Year 1, rather than years of lectures first, is a good idea.
Brunel's MBBS uses simulation technology, manikins, and virtual and augmented reality alongside placements.
1. What do you think are the advantages of learning some clinical skills through simulation before working with real patients?
2. What are the limits of what simulation can teach you?
3. How do you learn best, and how do you think that will suit a course built around simulation and early placements?
Follow-up: If you found you learned far better from textbooks than from hands-on simulation, how would you adapt?
Brunel's admissions policy states the school aims to recruit students with the academic ability and personal qualities to meet the requirements of Good Medical Practice.
1. Which part of Good Medical Practice do you think will be hardest for you to live up to as a student?
2. What have you already done that shows you can meet professional expectations?
3. Why does training at a school with this published values focus appeal to you?
Follow-up: How would you explain, to someone outside medicine, what Good Medical Practice is and why it matters to patients?
Brunel assesses candidates through a recorded, asynchronous vMMI rather than a live panel or in-person circuit.
1. What do you think is an advantage of this format compared with a live interview?
2. What do you think is a disadvantage of this format?
3. How will you prepare differently for a recorded interview compared with a face-to-face one?
Follow-up: If your recording did not go the way you planned, what would you do before submitting it?
Think about a period of work experience, paid work, or volunteering you have done.
1. Describe one specific moment from that time that changed how you think about healthcare.
2. What limitation did you notice in your own understanding at that moment?
3. What have you done since to address that gap in your understanding?
Follow-up: If you had not had access to that particular placement, what would you have done instead to build the same insight?
During work experience, insight often comes from observing non-clinical staff as much as doctors.
1. Describe an interaction you observed or had with a non-clinical member of staff, such as a receptionist, porter, or healthcare assistant.
2. What did this teach you about how a hospital or surgery actually runs?
3. Why does this matter for how a doctor should treat colleagues in these roles?
Follow-up: A friend tells you work experience in a hospital is a waste of time if you cannot shadow a consultant directly. How would you respond?
Reflect on a time you witnessed a healthcare professional manage their own time or workload under pressure.
1. What specifically did they do to cope with the pressure?
2. What effect did their approach have on the people around them, including patients?
3. What would you have found hardest about being in their position?
Follow-up: What would you do differently if you noticed a colleague was clearly overwhelmed but trying to hide it?
Reflect on a time during work experience, paid work, or volunteering when something did not go as you expected.
1. What happened?
2. How did you adjust your expectations?
3. What did this experience teach you about flexibility in a caring or service role?
Follow-up: How do you think unexpected situations like this will prepare you for the unpredictability of clinical work?
You are a first-year medical student assigned to a small anatomy study group. One group member repeatedly arrives late and seems distracted, and you later learn privately that they are caring for a sick relative at home.
1. How would you balance your concern for this student with the group's need to prepare for an assessment?
2. What would you say to them, and when?
3. What personal quality is most important for handling this kind of situation well?
Follow-up: Record your response to how you would raise this with your tutor, if the student asked you to keep it confidential but their absence is affecting the group's mark.
Honesty is one of the professional values set out in Good Medical Practice.
1. Describe a time when telling the truth was the harder but better option.
2. What made it difficult in the moment?
3. What would you do if being honest meant admitting a mistake to someone in authority?
Follow-up: Would your answer change if the mistake had already caused harm to someone else? Explain why or why not.
Resilience is needed to cope with setbacks across a long medical career.
1. Describe a specific time you did not get the result you wanted after working hard.
2. What did you do in the days immediately afterwards?
3. What long-term change, if any, did you make as a result?
Follow-up: How would you recognise the difference, in yourself, between healthy resilience and pushing through when you actually need to ask for help?
Self-awareness is a quality assessors look for in applicants.
1. What is one piece of feedback you have received that surprised you?
2. Why do you think it surprised you?
3. What have you changed as a result?
Follow-up: If you recorded this interview again in a year's time, what do you think you would answer differently?
You are shadowing in a GP waiting room when a patient becomes visibly upset after reading a letter from the practice.
1. What would your immediate priorities be as a bystander, not a clinician?
2. What personal quality would help you respond well in this moment?
3. What would you avoid doing?
Follow-up: The patient asks you directly what the letter means. How do you respond, given you are not medically qualified?
You are part of a group of students producing a joint presentation for a university open day. Two members disagree strongly about which approach to take, and the deadline is in two days.
1. What role would you take in resolving this disagreement?
2. What would you say to each person involved?
3. What would you prioritise if the disagreement could not be fully resolved before the deadline?
Follow-up: Record your response if one of the two students later tells you privately that they feel you took the other person's side.
Imagine you are asked to coordinate a small group task where one member has much stronger technical knowledge than the rest, but poor communication skills, leaving others confused about what to do.
1. How would you use this person's strength while addressing the communication gap?
2. What specifically would you say to them?
3. Why does this situation resemble teamwork between a doctor and other healthcare professionals?
Follow-up: The team member becomes defensive when you raise this. How do you keep the group working effectively?
You are leading a small team revising together for an exam. With one week left, you realise the group's plan is too ambitious to complete.
1. What would you do first?
2. How would you communicate the change in plan to the team?
3. What makes a leader's approach to admitting a plan is not working different from simply giving up on it?
Follow-up: One team member insists on sticking to the original plan. How do you handle the disagreement while keeping the group moving forward?
Reflect on a time you had to ask someone else for help, when you would have preferred to manage alone.
1. What made it difficult to ask?
2. What happened when you did ask?
3. What did you learn about the value of asking for help in a team?
Follow-up: Why might some medical students or doctors be reluctant to ask for help, and what effect can that have on patient safety?
This vMMI task asks you to record a short explanation as if speaking to a patient. Imagine you are a medical student and the person in front of you has just been told they need to start taking a daily tablet for high blood pressure for the rest of their life. They look worried.
1. Record how you would explain, in plain language, why the tablet is needed.
2. Record how you would address a concern that they will become dependent on medication.
3. Record how you would check they have understood what you have told them.
Follow-up: Now record how your explanation would change if the person told you they are frightened of taking any tablets because a relative had a bad reaction to medication in the past.
This vMMI task asks you to record a short explanation suitable for someone with no scientific background. Explain why taking antibiotics exactly as prescribed is important, even once someone starts to feel better.
1. Record your explanation in plain language.
2. Record how you would respond to someone who says they always stop taking antibiotics once they feel well.
3. Record why this matters not just for the individual patient but for the wider community.
Follow-up: Record how you would explain the same idea to a worried parent whose child refuses to take the rest of a course of medicine because it tastes unpleasant.
This vMMI task asks you to record advice to a friend. Your friend tells you by video message that they have been feeling constantly tired and low for several weeks but do not want to go to the doctor because they are 'too busy'.
1. Record how you would respond as a supportive friend, not a medical expert.
2. Record what you would say to encourage them to seek help without being pushy.
3. Record what you would avoid saying.
Follow-up: Record your response if your friend then tells you they already tried to see a GP once and found the experience unhelpful.
This vMMI task asks you to record instructions. Explain, step by step and without using any visual aids, how someone should correctly measure and take their own temperature with a digital thermometer at home.
1. Record clear step-by-step instructions.
2. Record how you would check understanding without being able to see the person.
3. Explain why clear verbal instruction matters in medicine, where you cannot always demonstrate something physically.
Follow-up: Record how your instructions would change if you learned the person had difficulty reading small text on a screen.
This vMMI task asks you to record a response to a worried parent by video message. Their teenage child has just been referred for further tests after a routine check-up, and the parent is frightened it means something serious.
1. Record how you would acknowledge their worry.
2. Record how you would explain, without giving false reassurance, that further tests do not always mean something serious.
3. Record what practical next step you would suggest.
Follow-up: Record how your message would change if the parent told you they had already looked up the referral online and found frightening information.
This vMMI task asks you to record a short message to a classmate. A coursemate tells you by video message that they have fallen badly behind on an assignment because of personal problems and are thinking of dropping out.
1. Record how you would respond with empathy.
2. Record what practical suggestions you might offer.
3. Record how you would encourage them to access proper support rather than relying only on you.
Follow-up: Record how your response would change if the coursemate asked you not to mention this to anyone else, including university support staff.
A university student comes to the GP surgery where you are observing and asks for emergency contraception. She says she does not want her boyfriend, who is in the waiting room, to know the details of her consultation.
1. What ethical principle is most relevant here?
2. Why does patient confidentiality matter even when a partner is nearby?
3. What is the limit of your role in a situation like this, as a student?
Follow-up: What would you do if the boyfriend later asked you, as the student who greeted them, what the consultation was about?
A fellow medical student posts on social media a photo from a hospital corridor, with a joking caption about a 'boring shift', though no patient is identifiable in the image.
1. What professionalism concerns, if any, does this raise?
2. Does the fact that no patient is identifiable change your view?
3. What would you do if you saw this post?
Follow-up: How would your answer change if a patient's name badge was faintly visible in the background?
The NHS has a limited budget and cannot fund every treatment that could help every patient.
1. What ethical principle should guide decisions about which treatments to fund?
2. Is it fair that some expensive but effective treatments are not routinely funded?
3. What would you say to a patient who asks why a treatment they want is not available on the NHS?
Follow-up: Should the cost of a treatment ever be considered alongside how much it is likely to help a patient? Explain your reasoning.
A patient tells you, a student observer, something important about their health that they have not yet told the doctor treating them.
1. What is your responsibility in this situation?
2. What ethical principle is in tension here?
3. What would you say to the patient?
Follow-up: The patient asks you specifically not to tell the doctor. How do you respond?
You discover that a close friend on your course has been copying parts of another student's coursework.
1. What are the ethical issues at stake?
2. What would influence your decision about whether to report this?
3. What would you say to your friend directly?
Follow-up: Your friend says that everyone does it and it is not a big deal. How do you respond?
Waiting times for routine hospital appointments have been a significant public concern in recent years.
1. What do you think are the main reasons for long waiting times in the NHS?
2. What impact can a long wait have on a patient's health and wellbeing?
3. As a future doctor, what could you personally do to help manage this problem within your own practice?
Follow-up: If you were given responsibility for reducing a waiting list in one department, where would you start and why?
Remote GP consultations, by phone or video, became far more common after 2020 and remain widely used.
1. What are the benefits of remote consultations for patients and for the NHS?
2. What groups of patients might be disadvantaged by a shift towards more remote care?
3. What is your view on the right balance between remote and face-to-face appointments?
Follow-up: A patient tells you they feel 'fobbed off' by phone consultations and want to be seen in person. How would you respond as their doctor?
The NHS workforce has faced widely reported shortages and high levels of staff burnout.
1. What do you think are the main causes of this problem?
2. How might staff shortages affect patient safety?
3. What can an individual doctor do to look after their own wellbeing while working in an understaffed system?
Follow-up: Does learning about this make you reconsider your choice of career? Explain your answer.
Good Medical Practice sets out the standards all UK doctors are expected to meet.
1. Why do you think it is important for the profession to have a shared, published code of conduct?
2. Which part of it do you think is hardest to live up to in daily practice?
3. How might this guidance apply to you even while you are still a student?
Follow-up: Should a doctor ever be allowed to break one of these standards if they believe it is in a patient's best interest? Explain your reasoning.
An ageing population means more people are living longer with multiple long-term health conditions.
1. What challenges does this create for how the NHS is organised?
2. What role might doctors play differently in future to manage this shift?
3. What do you think the public can reasonably expect from the NHS given these pressures?
Follow-up: Should more NHS resources shift from hospital care to community and preventative care? Explain your view.
Medical knowledge changes constantly as new research is published.
1. How would you decide whether a new piece of health research is reliable enough to change how you think about treating patients?
2. What role does peer review play in this process?
3. How will you keep your own knowledge up to date once you qualify?
Follow-up: A patient shows you a health article from social media that contradicts current medical guidance. How do you respond?
A preliminary study, not yet peer reviewed, claims that a common food supplement reduces the risk of a serious illness, and this has become a major news story.
1. What does 'not yet peer reviewed' mean, and why does it matter?
2. What are the risks of the public acting on this claim before it has been properly checked?
3. What would you say if a family member asked whether they should start taking the supplement?
Follow-up: The study later turns out to have been funded by the company that makes the supplement. Does this change your view, and why?
Evidence-based medicine means basing treatment decisions on the best available research evidence, rather than on personal experience alone.
1. Why might relying only on personal clinical experience be risky?
2. What are the limits of evidence-based medicine, for example when there is no strong research on a rare condition?
3. How should a doctor combine evidence, clinical experience, and the individual patient's wishes when making a decision?
Follow-up: A senior doctor tells you that 'in my experience' a certain approach works better than the published guidelines suggest. How would you think this through?
Clinical trials often report results as averages across a group of patients.
1. Why might an average result not tell you everything you need to know when treating an individual patient?
2. What other information about a trial would you want to know before applying its findings?
3. How should a doctor explain the limits of trial evidence to a patient asking about their own chances?
Follow-up: A patient asks you to guarantee that a treatment will work for them because 'the trial said it works'. How do you respond?
Illustrative figures. A university health clinic is deciding how to allocate 100 appointment slots next week between two services: a general wellbeing drop-in and an exam-stress support clinic. Last term, the wellbeing drop-in used 40 out of 60 slots offered, and the exam-stress clinic used 55 out of 60 slots offered, with 20 people turned away.
1. Based on these figures, how would you suggest allocating the 100 slots?
2. What other information would help you make a better decision?
3. What are the risks of simply following last term's demand pattern?
Follow-up: Halfway through the week, the exam-stress clinic reaches full capacity again. What would you suggest the clinic does?
Illustrative figures. A screening test for a condition has a sensitivity of 90% and a specificity of 80%. In a population of 1,000 people, 100 actually have the condition.
1. Using these figures, roughly how many people with the condition will the test correctly identify?
2. Roughly how many people without the condition will be incorrectly told they have it?
3. What problems could this create for patients and for the health service?
Follow-up: Why might a test with these figures still be considered useful despite producing some incorrect results?
Illustrative figures. A hospital ward has four patients who all need a doctor's review this morning. Patient A had surgery yesterday and now has increasing pain. Patient B is medically stable and waiting only for discharge paperwork. Patient C has a mild rash that started overnight. Patient D, three days after a hip operation, has become confused and short of breath in the last hour.
1. In what order would you prioritise seeing these patients, and why?
2. What is your reasoning for placing the lowest priority patient where you did?
3. What would you do if, partway through, a fifth more urgent case arrived?
Follow-up: After reviewing Patient D, you are asked to also help with an emergency elsewhere. How do you decide what to do?
Illustrative figures. A community clinic records that, of 200 patients booked over a month, 30 did not attend their appointment. Of those 30, illustrative figures show 18 lived more than five miles from the clinic and 22 were booked during standard working hours.
1. What possible explanations do these figures suggest for missed appointments?
2. What further information would help confirm which explanation is correct?
3. What practical change might the clinic consider based on this data?
Follow-up: A colleague suggests simply charging a fee for missed appointments. What are the problems with that approach?
Reflect on a time you had to change your mind about something important after new information came to light.
1. What was the original view you held?
2. What changed your mind?
3. How did it feel to admit you had been wrong?
Follow-up: How might this experience help you respond well when a senior colleague corrects your clinical reasoning in the future?
Reflect on a time you made a mistake that affected someone else, even in a small way.
1. What was the mistake and how did you find out about it?
2. What did you do to put it right?
3. What would you do differently if faced with the same situation again?
Follow-up: How should a medical team create an environment where people feel able to admit mistakes quickly?
Reflect on a piece of feedback that was hard to hear.
1. What was the feedback and who gave it to you?
2. How did you feel in the moment you heard it?
3. What did you do with that feedback afterwards?
Follow-up: Why is it important for a doctor to be able to accept feedback from people more junior than themselves?
Reflect on a time you worked through significant uncertainty, without knowing the outcome in advance.
1. Describe the situation.
2. What made the uncertainty difficult to manage?
3. What helped you cope with not knowing the outcome?
Follow-up: How do you think you will manage the high levels of uncertainty that are a normal part of clinical decision-making?
Reflect on an experience that changed an assumption you previously held about a group of people.
1. What was the assumption, and where do you think it came from?
2. What specifically changed your view?
3. How might this experience shape the way you treat patients from different backgrounds to your own?
Follow-up: How will you stay open to having your assumptions challenged again once you are a qualified doctor?
Brunel uses this format for medicine: Asynchronous virtual MMI. There are 6 stations, each about 7 minutes. Interviews are held online.
Interview timing for Brunel: Rolling waves across the cycle, completed within five days of your invitation. Always check the university's own admissions pages for this year's dates.
Brunel assesses: Good Medical Practice attributes, Communication, Ethical reasoning, Motivation.
No. They are 50 original MedicHut practice questions, written to match Brunel's published interview format. Universities do not share their real questions, so your interview may differ.
Yes. Every question is free to practise, with no sign-up needed. You can make a free account to save your notes.
Brunel medical school guide: entry requirements and interview advice
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