Medical School Multiple Mini Interview Questions to Help You Prepare

Padya Paramita

Medical School Multiple Mini Interview Questions to Help You Prepare

The most unique among the types of medical school interviews is the Multiple Mini Interview, or MMI. MMIs involve 6-10 interview stations, each focused on different Multiple Mini Interview questions or scenarios. You will be given a description to review, prepare for 2 minutes, and then have a 5 to 8-minute time slot where you discuss a topic, interact with a patient/family member, or react to an issue. The interviewer will observe your responses and evaluate the way you interact with him or her. The MMI is a closed-file interview—you are typically being evaluated by a standardized patient who does not know anything about you. You are assessed with an established evaluation form after you’ve answered the Multiple Mini Interview questions

Through Multiple Mini Interview questions, med schools evaluate your verbal and nonverbal communication skills, critical thinking, ethical decision-making skills, and knowledge of the healthcare system. The rationale behind the MMI is that the more interviewers and the more samples of behavior, the more reliable the interview information. It is meant to dilute the chance of interviewer or situational biases. A candidate is not expected to have any specialized knowledge to participate effectively in the MMI. 

Some medical schools combine traditional interviews and MMI, so you might encounter a hybrid interview. Examples of institutions that have incorporated the MMI interview include NYU School of Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, Stanford Medical School, UCLA Prime, University of California Davis School of Medicine, and University of Massachusetts Medical School among others. To help you prepare, we have included some examples of Multiple Mini Interview questions so that you know what to expect at these interviews.

  • A 14-year-old patient requests birth control pills from you and asks that you not tell her parents. What would you do?
  • A member of your family decides to depend solely on alternative medicine for the treatment of his or her significant illness. What would you do?
  • If you have the choice of giving a transplant to a successful elderly member of the community and a 20-year-old drug addict—how do you choose?
  • A biotech company was hired by the Military to develop a cure for Ebola. They successfully developed a vaccine to treat the symptoms of the virus and lowered the mortality rate for infected patients. Discuss the implications of this on a global scale.
  • Your mother calls you and asks you to help with a major family decision. Your maternal grandfather is 70 years old and has been diagnosed with a condition that will kill him sometime in the next five years. He can have a procedure that will correct the disease and not leave him with any long-term problems, but the procedure has a 10% mortality rate. He wants to have the procedure, but your mother does not want him to. How would you help mediate this issue?
  • A patient with Downs Syndrome became pregnant. The patient does not want an abortion. Her mother and husband want the patient to have an abortion. What should a physician do in this situation?
  • A 17-year-old boy lives independently. He is married and has one child. He wants to participate in a medical research study. Does he need his parents’ permission?
  • A 40-year-old schizophrenic patient needs hernia repair. The surgeon discussed the procedure with the patient who understood the procedure. Can the patient give consent?
  • A physician picked up a car accident victim from the street and brought him to the ER in his car. He did not want to wait for an ambulance because the patient’s condition was critical. Physical examination in the ER reveals quadriplegia. Is the physician liable for this consequence?
  • An 18-year-old man is diagnosed to have suspected bacterial meningitis. He refuses therapy and returns to the college dormitory. What should a physician do in this situation?
  • Is it ethical for doctors to strike? If so, under what conditions?
  • There is an outbreak of an incredibly contagious life-threatening disease. The disease is spreading across the country at a rapid rate and the survival rate is less than 50%. You are a senior health care administrator, and when the vaccine is developed, you have priority to receive the drug. Do you take the vaccine yourself or give it to another person? Why or why not?
  • You are a health researcher at an academic institution. You have been asked to work on a top-secret vaccine that would treat biomedical weapons or other communicable diseases. Before your breakthrough, you are instructed by the government to stop all research and turn over all materials and copies of your work to be destroyed. You know you are very close to finding a cure. What do you do?
  • A patient requests needles and syringes at his/her local pharmacy. They do not present with a prescription and based on the records you can access, they are not receiving treatment for diabetes. Do you sell the syringes or not?
  • Do you think medicine should be more about changing behavior to prevent disease or treating existing disease?
  • When is it appropriate to participate in the assisted suicide of a patient? Why or why not?
  • You are a 3rd-year medical student doing hospital rotations. A fellow medical student who is doing rounds with you often shows up to these sessions tired, messy, hungover, or even drunk. One day you found him in the lunchroom unaccompanied, so you decided to talk to him. Please enter the lunchroom.
  • If you could have any superpowers, what would it be and why?
  • What is your greatest weakness?
  • Tell me about a time when you made a mistake.
  • Tell us about a time you worked well with a team.
  • What is the greatest challenge you have faced?
  • Who is your role model?
  • Why do you want to become a doctor?
  • Why should we admit you?

As you can see, Multiple Mini Interview questions can include both medicine-related scenarios and questions about your own character development that are more similar to traditional interview questions. The scenarios in particular can definitely be daunting. However, if you are up to date on current medical news, understand your own values well, and have practiced with these questions, you should be all set to succeed and answer confidently. Good luck!

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