This guide was created to provide aspiring medics with the best possible opportunity to gain entrance into medical school.
It includes:
-Required Knowledge e.g. The NHS, 4 principles of medical ethics, the GMC, Confidentiality etc.
-Personal reflection questions
-Ethical questions
-Data anal...
Medical School Interviews Guide
The following guide was created to provide aspiring medics with the best possible
opportunity to gain entrance into medical school.
,Part 1 – Required Knowledge
The NHS
• The NHS (created in 1948) is based on three key principles
o It meets the needs of everyone
o Free at the point of delivery - any UK resident can go and see a doctor who
will offer diagnosis or treatment for an illness without asking the individual to
pay for this service.
o Service is based on clinical needs and not on the ability to pay
• Healthcare within the NHS is provided using a hierarchy method:
o Primary Care: First point of contact in healthcare.
▪ Best known providers are GPs.
▪ Since primary care practitioners often care for people over extended
periods of time the patient-doctor relationship is particularly
important.
▪ Primary care involves providing treatment for common illnesses and
management of long-term illnesses (e.g. diabetes) as well as
prevention of illnesses (e.g. vaccinations and screening programmes)
▪ When necessary, GPs will refer patients to specialists working in
secondary care.
o Secondary Care: Refers to the care provided by medical specialists who don’t
have the first contact with patients but who patients are referred to by a GP
e.g. cardiologist.
o Tertiary Care: Care provided by healthcare professionals (e.g. surgeons) to
patients who are referred to them by workers in secondary care.
,Private Sector in Healthcare
The different types of private providers are as follows:
• Private practice doctors ("private healthcare"):
o Refers to doctors working for private hospitals or for themselves who provide
healthcare to individual private patients.
o Private healthcare is normally used by patients to bypass the NHS waiting
lists.
o Patients either pay for the care themselves or through a private healthcare
insurance company.
o The doctors involved in private healthcare are often the same as those
working for the NHS; they undertake private activities in their spare time.
o The prices are typically much higher than the standard NHS tariff for the
same procedures.
o Example: If a patient has been told that they would need to wait 4 months to
get a hip replacement on the NHS but they want it earlier they can go to a
private orthopaedic surgeon who will perform the operation a lot sooner. The
patient will then have to pay with their own money unless they have private
insurance. In exchange they can expect more attention from staff, their own
private room and the procedure to be done sooner.
• External (non-NHS) providers contracted to do NHS work:
o This refers to private companies/charities who have been officially
commissioned to provide healthcare to NHS patients at NHS tariffs.
o Those services are commissioned by the CCGS and are provided at no direct
cost to the patient.
o It is the introduction of these private providers contracted to do NHS work
that has led to fear of privatization of the NHS.
o Here are arguments for and against the use of external providers:
▪ Private companies are run for profit. There is a risk that they will
therefore favour making profits over providing quality care. The
counter-argument to this is that the NHS has been run on a not-for-
profit basis for many years and has not always provided the best
quality of care it could.
▪ Private companies may “cherry-pick” the easy cases that are the most
profitable leaving the NHS burdened with the more complex loss-
making cases. The answer to this argument is that this is indeed how
it should run. Private companies should not take on complex cases
they can't handle. They instead should be asked to handle the simple
high-volume work. It follows then that the NHS (with more expertise
than the private sector) should handle the more complex cases.
, The General Medical Council (GMC)
The GMC has four distinct roles:
• Keeping a register of all qualified doctors: No doctor can practice in the UK without
being registered with the GMC.
• Fostering good medical practice: It does so by issuing guidance on standards that
doctors need to adhere to, such as the Good Medical Practice document and by
ensuring that doctors are regularly revalidated.
• Promoting high standards of medical education and training: The GMC sets and
monitors standards for undergraduate and post-graduate trainees. It also provides
guidance to ensure that doctors are supported in their continuing professional
development.
• Dealing with doctors who may not be fit to practice: Those doctors are investigated
and, in some cases, may be suspended or struck off from the medical register.
The Royal Colleges
• Royal Colleges are institutions charged with setting standards within their field and
for supervising the training of doctors within that specialty.
• Most of them grant membership to doctors only once they have passed a number of
examinations.
The Medical Training Pathway
• The first step is to study medicine at undergraduate level. Normally this will take four
to six years of study.
• Once you graduate you enter the two-year Foundation Programme, comprising
foundation year one (F1) and foundation year two (F2). This programme is designed
to provide trainees with defined practical skills and competencies, and sound
knowledge of how to manage acutely ill patients.
• Foundation doctors in both F1 and F2 can also undertake 'tasters'. A taster is a
period of time, usually two to five days, spent in a specialty in which the Foundation
trainee has not previously worked, which enables the development of insight into
the work of the specialty and which promotes career reflection.
• On successful completion of the foundation programme, doctors continue training in
either a specialist area of medicine or in general practice. The area of medicine
doctors choose will determine the length of training required before becoming a
fully qualified doctor. Doctors in these training programmes are known as the
registrars or specialty registrars.
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