In this episode, I answer some of your questions on med school interviews! Thank you to everyone who submitted a question - you can too by following @medicmornings on instagram and keeping an eye out for my stories. Q+A's will be done every two weeks!timestamps:[0:28] how to answer 'why medicine? why not nursing?'[3:30] if you had to reduce funding in an area in the NHS, which area would you choose?[5:18] tips for online interviews - i hate them because i have to watch myself talk[6:42] why choose to be a doctor rather than a pharmacist?[7:47] how did you answer 'why medicine?'[10:07] how to move on in an MMI after a station that didn't go well[12:38] how to approach acting and roleplay stations☆ SOCIALS ☆my website: themediocredoctor.square.siteinstagram: @medicmornings @themediocredoctortiktok: @stinkybluebellsemail: [email protected]: themediocredoctortranscription:Hey guys. Welcome back to another episode of Medic Mornings. I'm your host, Fiona and today I'm going to be answering some questions that you got submitted on Instagram. Let's jump right into it. {Theme music plays} I'm so sorry if I butcher any of your names. The first question is by Ayeshi who asked, “why medicine and not nursing”. I've had a lot of questions about why medicine, why not nursing or pharmacy or biochemistry etc? And these questions are very common, very stock questions that all medical applicants should be prepared to answer these. I talked about the extensive training that doctors receive, which gives them a more deeper and wider knowledge base, allowing them to solve more complex diagnosis in a way that nurses most likely wouldn't be able to because of their protocols that they often have to adhere to in the management of a patient. Doctors are able to think outside of the box more creatively and are more heavily involved in difficult cases, such as surgery. Just being more involved in academia is something that I'm really interested in. Secondly, while nurses have a lot of extensive clinical training, they can also now prescribe, such as nurse practitioners. This training never extends to intrusive procedures, like surgery, and third of all while nurses can specialize in certain fields, there's certain specialties within nursing such as nurse anesthetists (I can never pronounce that word) this is only one very specific field. Doctors often have a much wider variety of training especially during Foundation years of medical school where you're really subject to a wide range of clinical environments. Outpatient, inpatient. The fourth reason is just that doctors are able to be a team leader. While this is also available in nursing, doctors are able to lead the entire multidisciplinary team. I saw this in my own GP work experience where I saw the GPs allocating cases, according to each team member's strengths. So they gave the more prescription cases to the pharmacist, they gave the vaccination clinic cases to the nurses who were in charge of that at the time and they themselves took in new cases, new diagnoses. And that's something I'm really interested in. So that's how I differentiated the role of a nurse with a doctor. One of the most important things is that you should never be critical or derogatory of nurses in your answer because you need to show a solid understanding of the MDT and share why each role is vital. Okay, the next question is by Leiba who asked if you had to reduce funding in an area of the NHS, what area would you choose? That's a very difficult question. I would ask for a minute to produce my answer, collect my thoughts. I think that there's no right or wrong answer for this question in particular, because there are so many ways that you can argue. There is not one specific answer that is completely right or completely wrong. How I would answer this as the NHS is currently in a really dire state. So most funding to be protected is within the emergency services so the maternity wards, the GPs and Primary Care Facilities. However, those more elective procedures that can wait, perhaps travel vaccinations, research into less prevalent diseases such as malaria. Those parts can do with less funding. So that's why I would say. I would say allocate less funding to research that is not as important in this climate currently such as malaria, infectious diseases that are not present in the UK. And some elective procedures that are not important, you know, breast reduction bariatric surgery or procedures that aren't really essential because of this critical time in the NHS. Okay. Another question by Ruqaiyah, tips for online interviews. Literally hate them because I can see myself talk. This was an issue that I ran into during my online interviews because I use FaceTime on my laptop and I would record myself during my interviews and I quickly realized that my face was incredibly lopsided. I hated seeing myself talk, but I think this is something that takes more time and that happens even with face-to-face interviews. I think the best thing that you can do is practice and practice and practice, keep recording yourself in your bedroom. Keep doing fake interviews, mock interviews with your friends, with your mentors in school and over time you will see that your mannerisms, your behavior, your speech will become more coherent. You will also have much better body language, your hands will move more naturally while you talk. just record yourself. Consistently practice, consistently and you will become much, much better. Trust me. Next question. Why choose to be a doctor rather than a nurse or a pharmacist? I previously spoke about the nurses versus doctor discussion but this time I’ll talk about doctors vs pharmacists. both doctors and pharmacists have the aspect of prescribing medicine. However, I feel like medicine has a much wider variety of specialisms to choose from than Pharmacy. Doctors are more involved in the pathophysiology and a diagnosis of a patient, whereas Pharmacy is about the biochemistry and making sure that doctors don’t kill their patient. It's often the pharmacist that ensures the drug interactions, that there are no negative side effects and body physiology is all taken into account. Okay. Someone asked, how did you answer the question, why medicine? Okay, so this was how I memorized it, I memorized three main points. And every time I was asked that question, I would just regurgitate it. The first point was about my brain tumor. I had a brain tumor when I was 16 years old which was called a cavernous haemangioma. And I talked about my experience in the Pediatric Ward, and how I was immersed with doctors and nurses and the rest of the multidisciplinary team and how I was so in awe of the medicine behind it, I spoke to the doctor who did my surgery about what was actually happening in my brain, and it was so fascinating and I just fell in love. The second part is about how it entailed everything that I loved in a career. So that involved teaching it involved research it involved directly impacting the public. So, I'm really interested in social media and being practical and hands-on. And my practice, I also enjoyed that there was a lifelong learning aspect and that it was academically challenging but also morally challenged. There is no right and wrong answer often, it's a very big balance between science and Humanities. Not only do you study the science behind the diagnosis, you also study the science behind people. You always have to be involved in clinical judgement and having different perceptions of ethics. I think that is something that's really interesting to me. I also love that there were opportunities for further research, especially wet lab research. I conducted an EPQ on microbiology and it was incredibly fascinating. I enjoyed every single moment of it. I can't wait to conduct more research at University. Helen asked, in an MMI, how do you forget about a section and move on if you feel like it didn't go well. I've had this issue myself in all of my interviews, all four of my interviews. There was not a single interview where I finished feeling satisfied with my performance. Honestly, there were so many moments where I was like, I could have said something different. I shouldn't have said that, that answer was completely wrong but overall it turned out fine. We are our biggest critics and oftentimes, we will judge ourselves too harshly. These interviewers know how much pressure we are in. And they know how difficult it is. They purposely manufacture the environment to be demanding to test your ability to work under pressure and it's a very artificially manipulated environment. It also weeds out those people who aren't able to perform under pressure, so it's okay if you stutter, it's okay if you take a minute to think about your answer. The good thing about MMI stations is that every station is a clean slate. I don't think there's many medical schools that do traditional panel interviews anymore. I did a traditional panel for three of my interviews, just because it was online. But this year since universities are opening up, more face-to-face interviews are occurring, each station has a new interviewer. So just keep in mind that they don't know anything about the station that you just messed up. you just make sure that you put 100% effort into everything every single station, just make sure in the moment that you're trying your best. And honestly you probably didn't do as bad as you thought you did. Also the interviews are very fast paced like it is just question after question after question. So you have no time to panic or worry about what you just said. It's often after the interview that you start getting those feelings of ‘oh, I shouldn't have said that.’ Okay, she also asked, how do you approach the role play and acting stations? Oftentimes in a roleplay station they give you a prompt that has the storyline. For example, your neighbour ran over a cat or something. Or you are a medical student and your friend gave you last year's test answers, etc . And you're supposed to just read the card for one minute, and there's going to be an actor in the room. And you have to show one skill, for example, empathy, communication, teamwork, and Leadership etc. I personally didn't have any role play station last year since I was doing online interviews. But there are so many resources on MedEntry and Medify websites, which I'm sure are much more professional, and more understanding of this than I am. That’s a wrap! That's all the questions that I'm going to be answering today. Watch out for next next week's episode because I will be doing another Q&A in two weeks time. Next episode is going to be on professionalism, so watch out for that as well. And thank you so much for spending your time with me. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to subscribe and see you next time. Bye bye! {Theme music plays}

Ver todos los episodios