Free practice questions for the Dundee medicine interview, with the interview format taken from the university's own admissions pages.
Dundee does not run a rotating MMI. Your interview has two parts. First, you join five other applicants for a 30 minute group discussion on a set scenario, watched by an assessor. Then the group moves to a different assessor for a structured discussion. UK-based applicants attend in person at Ninewells campus. International applicants can choose a remote interview online. The whole visit, including registration, takes about 1 hour 40 minutes. You need no prior medical knowledge.
Original MedicHut practice questions. Real interviews may differ.
You are asked why you chose medicine rather than a related science or healthcare degree.
1. What is the single most important reason behind your choice?
2. How would you respond if someone suggested you had simply followed family or school expectations?
3. What part of your motivation do you think will be tested hardest during training?
Follow-up: If you discovered in your first year that you missed a subject you had given up, like pure maths or art, how would you respond?
Many applicants describe wanting a career that combines science with working with people.
1. How do you see these two sides of medicine fitting together day to day?
2. Which side do you currently feel more drawn to, and why?
3. What would you do if one of these sides turned out to dominate your working life far more than the other?
Follow-up: A friend studying pure science says you could have 'the science without the people'. How would you answer them?
Medical training is long, and Dundee's course runs across five years with placements throughout Scotland.
1. What keeps you motivated to commit to training that could take over a decade before full independence?
2. How do you plan to sustain that motivation through difficult years?
3. What would success look like to you at the end of year one?
Follow-up: If a difficult placement made you doubt your choice of career, what would you do next?
Reflect on when you first became seriously interested in a medical career, rather than just open to it as an option.
1. What was the turning point, if there was one?
2. How has your reasoning changed since then?
3. What evidence would convince you that medicine was the wrong choice for you?
Follow-up: Suppose a trusted mentor told you that you seemed better suited to research than clinical practice. How would you respond?
Dundee is known for its anatomy teaching and its spiral curriculum, where topics are revisited with increasing depth across the course.
1. What do you understand about how a spiral curriculum works compared with a more traditional structure?
2. Why might this style of teaching suit the way you learn?
3. What challenges might a spiral curriculum bring, and how would you manage them?
Follow-up: If you found that revisiting the same topic repeatedly felt repetitive rather than helpful, what would you do?
Dundee places students on clinical placements across Dundee and other parts of Scotland during training.
1. What appeals to you about training across a range of different locations?
2. What challenges might frequent placement moves bring for a student?
3. How would you prepare yourself practically for placements outside Dundee?
Follow-up: If a placement location was much further from your support network than expected, how would you adapt?
You have chosen to apply to Dundee alongside other medical schools.
1. What specific features of Dundee led you to include it on your UCAS form?
2. How did you find out about these features?
3. What would be the biggest personal adjustment in moving to Dundee for your studies?
Follow-up: If you were offered places at Dundee and another school with a very different teaching style, what would most influence your decision?
Dundee's course includes early patient contact as part of its approach to teaching clinical skills.
1. Why do you think early patient contact is valued by some medical schools?
2. What concerns, if any, do you have about meeting patients early in your training?
3. How would you prepare yourself for this kind of early responsibility?
Follow-up: If your first patient contact session did not go as smoothly as you hoped, how would you respond afterwards?
Think about a period of work experience, paid work, or volunteering relevant to healthcare.
1. Describe a specific moment that gave you insight into what a doctor's day-to-day role actually involves.
2. What surprised you most about this?
3. How has it shaped what you expect from your own training?
Follow-up: If this experience had instead put you off a particular area of medicine, how would you decide whether that reaction was fair?
You observed a healthcare professional managing a difficult conversation with a patient or family member.
1. What made this conversation difficult, in your view?
2. What specific skills did the professional use to handle it?
3. What did you learn about the limits of what you could do in the same situation as a student?
Follow-up: How would you prepare yourself to have a difficult conversation for the first time as a doctor?
Reflect on an experience, inside or outside healthcare, that involved working as part of a team towards a shared goal.
1. What was your specific role within that team?
2. What did you learn about contributing to a team rather than working alone?
3. How did the team handle a moment of disagreement or difficulty?
Follow-up: If you had disagreed strongly with the team's final decision, what would you have done?
You spent time observing a multidisciplinary team, such as a hospital ward or community health setting.
1. Describe one example where different professionals depended on each other to deliver good care.
2. What did this teach you about the doctor's specific role within a wider team?
3. What limitations of the doctor's role did you notice?
Follow-up: If you saw two professionals disagree about a patient's care plan, what would good resolution of that disagreement look like?
Consider an experience where something did not go to plan during your work experience or volunteering.
1. What happened, and what was your initial reaction?
2. What specific insight did this give you into coping with uncertainty?
3. How did this change the way you now approach new or unfamiliar situations?
Follow-up: If a similar situation happened again next week, what would you do differently?
Doctors are expected to be honest even when honesty is uncomfortable.
1. Describe a time you had to be honest about something difficult.
2. How did you decide what and how to say it?
3. Why does this quality matter particularly in medicine?
Follow-up: If being fully honest with a patient risked upsetting them unnecessarily, how would you balance honesty with kindness?
Resilience is often mentioned as an important quality for medical students.
1. What do you understand resilience to mean in a medical training context?
2. Give an example of a time you showed resilience.
3. What strategies do you use to recover after a setback?
Follow-up: How would you tell the difference between healthy resilience and simply ignoring a problem that needs addressing?
Self-awareness about your own limitations is valued in medical training.
1. What do you consider your biggest area for improvement right now?
2. What evidence do you have that this is a genuine area for development?
3. What specific steps are you taking to address it?
Follow-up: How would you feel if a tutor raised this same weakness in front of your group during training?
Doctors must sometimes manage their own stress while remaining calm for patients.
1. What strategies do you currently use to manage pressure or stress?
2. Give an example of a stressful situation you have handled.
3. What would you do if your usual coping strategies stopped working during training?
Follow-up: If you noticed a fellow student was struggling with stress but had not asked for help, what would you do?
Integrity sometimes means acting correctly even when no one else would know otherwise.
1. Describe a situation, in any context, where you chose to act with integrity despite no one checking.
2. What made you choose that course of action?
3. Why does this quality matter for a future doctor specifically?
Follow-up: What would you do if acting with integrity meant admitting a mistake that nobody else had noticed?
Dundee's interview includes a 30-minute observed group discussion with other applicants on a healthcare scenario.
Imagine your group is given a scenario about how a GP practice should prioritise patients during a period of high demand, with broad discussion points to consider.
1. How would you make sure every member of the group gets a chance to contribute?
2. What would you do if one member of the group dominated the conversation?
3. How would you handle a strong disagreement about priorities within the group?
Follow-up: If the group ran out of time without reaching a shared view, how would you want to close the discussion?
In a group discussion setting, applicants are assessed on how they interact with others, not just the content of their answers.
1. What do you think observers are likely to be looking for in how a group behaves together?
2. How would you make sure you are heard without talking over others?
3. What would you do if you realised you had misunderstood a point another applicant made?
Follow-up: If another applicant directly disagreed with something you said, how would you respond in the moment?
Imagine your group discussion scenario concerns whether a hospital should introduce a new visiting policy for families, with arguments for and against provided as discussion points.
1. What are some of the arguments you would expect on each side?
2. How would you encourage a quieter group member to share their view?
3. How would the group decide how to summarise its discussion if no consensus was reached?
Follow-up: If the assessor asked only one person from the group to summarise the discussion afterwards, what would you want that summary to include?
You are in a group discussion where one applicant repeatedly interrupts others to make their own points.
1. How would you respond to this in the moment, without being confrontational?
2. What is the risk of saying nothing about it?
3. How might you model good group behaviour instead?
Follow-up: If the interrupting continued despite your attempt to manage it, what would you do next?
Leadership in a group task does not always mean being the loudest voice.
1. What other ways can someone show leadership within a group discussion?
2. Describe a time you led a group, formally or informally, outside an interview setting.
3. What did you learn about the balance between leading and listening?
Follow-up: If you realised halfway through a group task that someone else's approach was better than yours, what would you do?
Working in a clinical team often means relying on people with very different roles and levels of experience.
1. Why is it important for a doctor to work well with people in different roles, such as nurses or healthcare assistants?
2. Describe a situation where you worked well with someone whose role or experience was very different from yours.
3. What would you do if you felt your view was being dismissed because of your junior position?
Follow-up: If a more senior colleague made a decision you disagreed with, how would you raise this respectfully?
Your group discussion scenario asks you to weigh up limited resources, for example which of several community health projects should receive extra funding.
1. What criteria would you want the group to use to compare the options?
2. How would you handle it if the group split into two opposing camps?
3. What would you personally argue for, and why?
Follow-up: If new information changed which project seemed most worthwhile, how would you expect the group to respond?
Reflect on a team project, in school, work, or elsewhere, that did not go smoothly.
1. What went wrong, in your view?
2. What was your specific contribution to resolving the problem?
3. What would you do differently if leading a similar team again?
Follow-up: If the same problem arose again in a clinical team during your training, what would you want to have learned from this earlier experience?
Clear communication matters both in a group discussion and in a one-to-one setting with an assessor.
1. How would you adjust your communication style between a group discussion and a one-to-one conversation?
2. What do you do if you realise the person you are speaking to has not understood your point?
3. Why might listening be as important as speaking clearly?
Follow-up: If an assessor asked you to explain a complex idea from your personal statement in simple terms, how would you approach it?
Imagine you need to explain a simple medical idea, such as how vaccination works, to someone with no scientific background.
1. How would you adapt your language and approach for this audience?
2. What common misunderstanding might you need to address first?
3. How would you check they had understood what you said?
Follow-up: If the person told you they still did not trust vaccines after your explanation, how would you respond?
You are asked to describe a time you had to communicate something difficult to someone who did not want to hear it.
1. What was the situation and what made it difficult?
2. How did you choose your words?
3. What would you do differently if faced with a similar situation again?
Follow-up: If the person became upset during the conversation, how would you have handled that?
During your one-to-one discussion with an assessor, you are asked to talk through your reasoning on a point raised earlier in the group discussion.
1. How would you structure your explanation to make your reasoning clear?
2. What would you do if the assessor pushed back on your reasoning?
3. How do you check that you have actually answered the question asked?
Follow-up: If you realised partway through your answer that your original reasoning had a flaw, what would you do?
Non-verbal communication, such as body language and tone, affects how messages are received.
1. Why might non-verbal communication matter particularly in a group discussion setting?
2. Give an example of how tone of voice can change the meaning of the same words.
3. How would you make sure your own body language supported what you were saying?
Follow-up: If you noticed another group member seemed uncomfortable or withdrawn during a discussion, what would you do?
You are asked to summarise a complicated group discussion in under a minute for someone who was not in the room.
1. What would you prioritise including?
2. What would you leave out, and why?
3. How would you make sure your summary was fair to views you personally disagreed with?
Follow-up: If your summary was challenged as inaccurate by another group member, how would you respond?
During the group discussion, your group is given a scenario about a patient who wants a treatment that their doctor believes will not help them.
1. What ethical principles are in tension in this situation?
2. How should the doctor balance respecting the patient's wishes with their own clinical judgement?
3. What would you want the final decision-making process to look like?
Follow-up: If the patient became upset at being refused the treatment, how should the doctor respond?
A scenario describes a hospital needing to decide how to allocate a limited number of specialist beds among several equally unwell patients.
1. What ethical principle could guide a fair decision in this situation?
2. What information would you want before deciding?
3. What is difficult about applying a single rule fairly to every case?
Follow-up: If one of the patients was a much younger person than the others, should that affect the decision?
A medical student on placement witnesses a senior colleague make a minor error that does not harm the patient.
1. Should the student say something, and if so, to whom?
2. What ethical principle is most relevant here?
3. How might the situation differ if the error had caused actual harm?
Follow-up: If the senior colleague asked the student to keep quiet about it, how should the student respond?
A patient declines a recommended treatment for personal or cultural reasons that the doctor does not fully understand.
1. What should guide the doctor's response to this refusal?
2. How should the doctor balance respect for the patient's autonomy with concern for their wellbeing?
3. What support might the doctor seek in a situation like this?
Follow-up: A colleague suggests simply not telling the patient about other options to avoid conflict. Is this acceptable?
Confidentiality is a core principle in medicine, but it is not absolute.
1. Can you think of a situation where a doctor might need to break patient confidentiality?
2. What should the doctor do before breaking confidentiality, where possible?
3. How would you explain this limit on confidentiality to a worried patient?
Follow-up: A patient asks you directly whether you would ever share what they tell you without their permission. How would you answer?
A scenario in the group discussion concerns whether scarce donor organs should be prioritised partly based on a patient's lifestyle choices.
1. What are the strongest arguments on each side of this question?
2. What ethical principle do you think should carry the most weight?
3. How would you want your group to present a balanced discussion of this to the assessor?
Follow-up: If a member of your group strongly disagreed with the majority view, how should the group handle presenting its conclusion?
Recruitment and retention of doctors in rural and remote parts of the UK, including parts of Scotland, is a recognised challenge.
1. What do you think makes it harder to recruit and retain doctors in rural areas?
2. What could be done to make rural practice more attractive?
3. How would you personally feel about working in a rural setting during or after training?
Follow-up: A fellow student says they would never consider rural practice. How would you respond to this view?
NHS waiting times for both routine and emergency care are frequently reported in the news.
1. What do you understand to be some of the causes of long waiting times?
2. What trade-offs are involved in trying to reduce them?
3. How might this affect the daily work of a newly qualified doctor?
Follow-up: A patient tells you they feel let down by how long they waited. How would you respond as their doctor?
Mental health services are often described as under significant pressure within the NHS.
1. Why do you think demand for mental health services has grown?
2. What role might a non-specialist doctor play in supporting a patient's mental health?
3. What are the limits of what a busy doctor can realistically do in this area?
Follow-up: A patient tells you they do not think anyone will take their mental health concerns seriously. How would you respond?
Scotland's NHS is structured and funded somewhat differently from the NHS in England.
1. What do you understand about how healthcare is organised within Scotland?
2. Why might it matter for a future Scottish doctor to understand this structure?
3. What would you want to find out more about before starting your training?
Follow-up: If a patient asked you why their care seemed to work differently from a relative's care in England, how would you respond?
Staff wellbeing and burnout among doctors are widely discussed topics in healthcare.
1. Why do you think staff wellbeing affects the quality of patient care?
2. What could be done to support new doctors in their first years of practice?
3. What personal strategies might help you look after your own wellbeing during a demanding career?
Follow-up: If you noticed a colleague showing signs of burnout, what would you do?
Science taught at school is often presented as settled fact, but medical understanding changes over time.
1. Can you think of an example where scientific or medical understanding has changed?
2. Why is it important for a doctor to accept that knowledge can change?
3. How would you keep your own knowledge up to date throughout your career?
Follow-up: How would you explain to a patient that medical advice they received years ago has since changed?
Anatomy teaching is a particular strength associated with Dundee's medical course.
1. Why do you think a detailed understanding of anatomy matters for a doctor, even outside surgical specialties?
2. What different ways can anatomy be taught, and which do you think would suit you best?
3. What concerns, if any, do you have about this part of the course?
Follow-up: How would you explain the value of learning detailed anatomy to someone who plans to become a GP rather than a surgeon?
A new medicine is approved for use only after passing through several stages of clinical testing.
1. What do you understand about why medicines go through multiple testing phases before approval?
2. Why might a treatment that works well in a trial behave differently in everyday use?
3. What role might doctors play in reporting problems with medicines after approval?
Follow-up: A patient tells you they do not trust newly approved medicines. How would you respond?
The following is an illustrative figure. A rural GP practice has 1,200 registered patients. Last year, 300 patients needed a hospital referral, and of those, 90 were for conditions that could have been managed earlier in primary care.
1. What percentage of referred patients fell into this earlier-manageable group?
2. What further information would help you judge whether this is a genuine problem?
3. Suggest one practical change the practice could test to address this pattern.
Follow-up: If most of these cases involved patients living furthest from the practice, what might this suggest about the underlying cause?
The following is an illustrative figure. A screening programme correctly identifies 90 out of 100 people who have a condition, but also incorrectly flags 15 out of 100 people who do not have it.
1. In a population of 2,000 people where 100 actually have the condition, roughly how many would you expect the test to flag in total?
2. What problem does this illustrate about screening in a population where the condition is uncommon?
3. Why is this relevant to decisions about offering a screening test widely?
Follow-up: How would you explain this result to a worried person who has just tested positive?
Think about the process of preparing for a two-part assessment that includes a group discussion as well as a one-to-one conversation.
1. Which part of this process do you expect to find more challenging, and why?
2. What have you done to prepare for the group discussion element specifically?
3. How will you use feedback from today, whatever the outcome, to improve in future?
Follow-up: If you were not offered a place this year, what would you take forward from this experience?
Reflect on a time you changed your opinion about something significant after discussing it with a group of people who disagreed with you.
1. What was your original view and what changed it?
2. How did you handle the process of changing your mind in front of others?
3. Why is this kind of flexibility useful in a group discussion and in medicine generally?
Follow-up: How would you respond if changing your mind in a group discussion meant publicly disagreeing with something you had argued moments earlier?
Dundee uses this format for medicine: Group discussion and interview. Interviews may be in person or online.
Interview timing for Dundee: In-person and online interviews are held in January. Always check the university's own admissions pages for this year's dates.
Dundee assesses: Communication, Teamwork, Personal values, Professionalism.
No. They are 50 original MedicHut practice questions, written to match Dundee's published interview format. Universities do not share their real questions, so your interview may differ.
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Dundee medical school guide: entry requirements and interview advice
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