Free practice questions for the East Anglia (UEA) medicine interview, with the interview format taken from the university's own admissions pages.
Norwich Medical School interviews by Multiple Mini Interview, held on campus in person for both UK and international applicants. There are six stations, each with a different interviewer. You get 1.5 minutes to prepare and 5 minutes at each station. You will need to give two examples of relevant work experience and reflect on what they taught you. Interviews run from November to March, and you are told the format in your invitation.
Original MedicHut practice questions. Real interviews may differ.
You are applying to a graduate-entry style curriculum that emphasises patient contact and problem-based learning from an early stage.
1. What is the main reason you want to study medicine rather than another health-related degree?
2. How do you expect this motivation to be tested across a demanding course?
3. What would you do if, partway through year one, your enthusiasm for medicine dropped?
Follow-up: If you were offered a place on a related health science course instead, would your motivation for medicine change?
Many applicants describe a desire to "help people" as their core motivation for medicine.
1. What makes your own motivation more specific than this general phrase?
2. What single experience best illustrates your own reason for applying?
3. How would you explain this motivation to a patient who asked you directly why you became a doctor?
Follow-up: A friend says they think you are only interested in studying medicine for its prestige. How would you respond?
Problem-based learning asks students to direct much of their own learning in small groups rather than through traditional lectures.
1. Why does this style of learning suit, or challenge, your own motivation to study medicine?
2. What specific skills do you think you will need to succeed in this kind of learning?
3. What would you do if you found self-directed learning harder than expected?
Follow-up: If a lecture-based course offered you a place as well, which approach would you choose and why?
Medical training is long, and full independent practice is many years away from the first day of the course.
1. What keeps your motivation steady over such a long timeline?
2. How would you recognise if your motivation was genuinely fading rather than you just having a difficult week?
3. What would you do if you reached that point?
Follow-up: If a careers adviser suggested a quicker route into a caring profession, how would you respond?
Norwich Medical School places students in contact with patients from the first weeks of the course.
1. Why does early patient contact appeal to you as part of your motivation for applying here?
2. What do you think you will find most difficult about this early responsibility?
3. How would you prepare yourself for your first patient interaction?
Follow-up: If your first patient contact experience was more difficult than you expected, how would that affect your motivation?
Norwich Medical School is known for problem-based learning and placing students with patients early in the course.
1. What have you found out about how this course is structured compared with more traditional medical courses?
2. Why does this structure appeal to you personally?
3. What would you still want to find out before starting?
Follow-up: If you found that self-directed learning did not suit your usual study style, how would you adapt?
Around half of the Norwich Medical School course is reported to be spent on placement across hospital, community, general practice and voluntary settings.
1. Why might this range of placement settings matter for training a future doctor?
2. What specific challenge do you expect from moving between a wide range of settings?
3. What benefit do you expect from this breadth of experience?
Follow-up: If your placement site changed location at short notice, how would you manage the disruption to your routine?
You have been invited to interview at UEA and at another medical school in the same window.
1. What specific features of UEA 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 Norwich for your studies?
Follow-up: If you were offered both places, what single piece of information would most influence your decision?
UEA interviews use the MMI format, moving candidates through a series of separate short stations.
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?
Norwich is a smaller city than many other locations with medical schools, with placements spread across Norfolk and the wider region.
1. What do you think are the benefits of training in a smaller city with a close-knit medical community?
2. What might be the challenges of this kind of environment?
3. How would you build a support network early in your course?
Follow-up: A new student tells you they feel isolated after moving to Norwich. What would you suggest to them?
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 or caring 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 this placement had been cancelled before you could gain this insight?
You have observed, or would expect to observe, 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?
During observation in a healthcare setting, you may have noticed differences in how professionals communicated with patients from different 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?
Reflect on an experience, inside or outside healthcare, where 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 the way 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 short shadowing sessions rather than long placements.
1. What is the most useful thing you learned, or would expect to learn, 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?
Problem-based learning relies heavily on students being proactive and self-directed rather than waiting to be taught.
1. Describe a time you had to motivate yourself to learn something without close supervision.
2. What made this difficult, and how did you overcome it?
3. What would you do if you found yourself falling behind in a self-directed group task?
Follow-up: A group member in your PBL group is consistently underprepared for sessions. How would you approach this?
Resilience is often cited as essential 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?
Students on this course are expected to adapt to a wide range of placement settings across Norfolk and the wider region.
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 placed somewhere far from your usual support network, how would you adapt?
You are part of a problem-based learning group where one member consistently arrives unprepared, slowing the group down.
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 keeping the group on track?
Follow-up: The group member reveals they have been dealing with a personal crisis. Does this change your approach?
Effective healthcare teams 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 project and two team members both believe they are responsible for the same task.
1. How would you resolve the confusion in the moment?
2. How would you prevent this happening again in future projects?
3. What does this scenario suggest about communication within teams?
Follow-up: One of the two team members 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 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 pressure check, to someone with no medical background.
1. Explain, in plain English as if speaking to that person directly, what the check 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 anxious about what the result might show. 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 lifestyle changes before prescribing medication.
1. Explain this idea 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 situation?
Follow-up: They tell you they have already tried lifestyle changes without success. 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 sharing their own prescription medication with a family member who cannot afford to see a doctor.
1. What are the immediate concerns a doctor should raise with this patient?
2. How would you balance the patient's and family member'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 the family member refuses to register with a GP 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 38 with a 75% chance of full recovery if treated within 24 hours, Patient B is 68 with a 45% 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 or other health conditions, might change this decision?
Follow-up: Suppose new illustrative figures showed Patient B's recovery chance rises to 70% 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?
Rural and coastal areas, including parts of Norfolk, have reported particular difficulty recruiting and retaining GPs and hospital staff.
1. What do you understand to be the main reasons healthcare staff recruitment can be harder in some regions than others?
2. What impact might this have on patients living in those areas?
3. What approaches might help improve recruitment and retention in under-served regions?
Follow-up: If you were allocated a placement in a rural area with known staff shortages, how would you feel about it and why?
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?
Social prescribing, where patients are referred to non-medical community support such as exercise groups or debt advice, has grown in recent years, including in community-focused services.
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, including in rural and community settings.
1. What benefits might remote consultations offer patients and the health service in a largely rural region?
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 in a rural village 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?
Problem-based learning asks students to work through real or realistic clinical scenarios in small groups before formal teaching on the topic.
1. Why might working through a problem before being taught the theory help some students learn more deeply?
2. What risk does this approach carry if a group misunderstands the problem early on?
3. How would you check your own understanding was accurate before moving on?
Follow-up: Your PBL group reaches a confident but factually incorrect conclusion. How would you raise this with the group?
Understanding risk is important when discussing test results or treatment options with patients.
1. Using these illustrative figures, a screening test is 92% accurate at detecting a disease that affects 1 in 800 people, and also produces false positives in 4% 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: 1100 appointments were booked last month, 165 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 120 out of 1080 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 12 infections among 400 patients, Ward B had 8 infections among 390 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 480 candidates interviewed, 310 scored above the pass mark, and candidates from rural secondary schools averaged a slightly lower mean score than candidates from urban 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 access to interview preparation resources is accounted for. How does this change your view?
You are given illustrative figures showing a community clinic's patient satisfaction scores dropped from an average of 8.0 out of 10 to 6.2 out of 10 over six months, during which the clinic switched a third of its appointments to remote consultations to cover staff shortages.
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 change back to mostly in-person appointments?
Follow-up: Illustrative figures also show travel times to the clinic for rural patients average 40 minutes each way. 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?
UEA uses this format for medicine: Six station MMI. There are 6 stations, each about 5 minutes. Interviews are held in person.
Interview timing for UEA: November to March. Always check the university's own admissions pages for this year's dates.
UEA assesses: Communication, Reflection on work experience, Motivation, Problem solving.
No. They are 50 original MedicHut practice questions, written to match UEA'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.
UEA medical school guide: entry requirements and interview advice
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