If you have a KING’S Medical School interview coming up, here are some interview questions with answers to help you.
KING’S Medical School is also known as the GKT School of Medical Education, Medical school in London, England and King’s traditionally uses the MMI format. The interview has a 7 station MMI and each station lasts for 5-6 minutes with initially two full minutes of preparation time.
Getting into King’s medical school is extremely competitive and the 2 options include direct entry or as graduate entry degrees.
King’s Medical University Interview Question Types
A common question at your forthcoming King’s medical school interview may involve being asked if you can define what a doctor is or the role of a doctor. As a career, being a doctor is one of the most diverse and challenging available. Here are some pointers on how you may want to get your points across.
A doctor is someone who is qualified to treat people who are ill or injured. If a doctor is a qualified surgeon, they are able to operate on those who are ill or injured. Doctors can choose to specialise in different fields, such as the care of the elderly (geriatrics), or the care of children (paediatrics). Then there’s the choice of whether to become a general practitioner (GP) or a general surgeon. The medical profession faces the challenge of trying to heal people and to keep them as healthy as possible on a daily basis using MDTs. The daily life of a doctor involves using interpersonal skills, communication and scientific knowledge.
During your answers, you may wish to elaborate on the different specialities including the below.
- Community Doctors
Over 50% of medical school qualifiers will end up becoming GPs. General Practitioners as primary care providers who work in the community and see patients of all ages and backgrounds. They are faced with the formidable task of being at the frontline of healthcare, first point of contact in a patient’s care journey. This is primary care as opposed to secondary care. They diagnose and treat a great deal of patients independently and refer them on to appropriate specialist doctors in hospitals for further medical opinions and advice. - Hospitals
Around 40% of doctors work in hospitals, either as specialty doctors or as surgeons. There are around at least 35 key medical specialties to choose from and, within these, there are many sub-specialties. For example, you could train to become an obstetrician and then within this become a sub-specialist in gestational diabetes in high-risk pregnancies. - Other community doctors
These are varied and including those who work in neurological health and in community paediatrics in small to medium sized frameworks. Doctors who work in hospices also fall under the umbrella term of ‘community doctors’. For example, palliative care specialists work towards controlling symptoms effectively in hospice patients who are terminally ill. - Other faculties within medicine
Some doctors carry out non-clinical duties. Academic foundation programmes and academic careers mean you can pursue a career in academia such as lecturing or medical research. This primarily involves doing research and teaching other students and medical professionals. Some may use their medical degree to go into research-based careers in whatever field interests them: global heath, breast cancer or bariatric surgery, for example. Others may use their medical degree as a starting point for further study. You could, for instance, progress to a dental degree and become a maxillofacial surgeon.
Being a doctor therefore presents vast opportunities to diversify into a wide range of career branches.
An important question to be ready to get asked for during any King’s medical school MMI interview is your personal reason in why you want to become a doctor? To answer this, also consider on what are the pros and cons of being a doctor? When preparing for your interview, make sure you have a general overview of career pathways once you have qualified as a doctor within the UK.
- Medical School
A medical student’s time in medical school usually lasts 5 or 6 years, depending on whether the student undergoes an intercalated year for a BSc. An intercalated year is a year taken out of medical school to study a subject in detail. Subjects include physiology or biochemistry and a BSc can be compulsory or optional depending on which medical school is considered. . - Foundation Training Pathway (F1–2)
Upon their graduation, all medical students will have to do 2 years of foundation training as a junior doctor either at the same hospital or different ones. This gives them rotations in medicine, surgery and specialties, e.g. psychiatry, general practice, and obstetrics and gynaecology, for them to decide on a future career in one of the pathways to specialise in. - Core Training Pathways (CT1–2)
After the 2 years of foundation training, junior doctors select the major branch of medicine they want to pursue, whether it is medicine (Core Medical Training, CMT), general practice (GP Specialist Training, GP), surgery (Core Surgical Training, CST) or one of the specialties (such as radiology, obstetrics and gynaecology, psychiatry or ophthalmology). Doctors choosing the CMT/CST route go through various different rotations, in either medicine or surgery, before they apply for a specialty training post. Doctors therefore often have to relocate and move to different parts of the country. - Speciality Training (ST3–8)
This is the next step when doctors decide on higher training/more specialist training, e.g. to become a cardiologist, within the field of medicine. The training can be between 4 and 6 years long depending on the specialty. Progression depends on assessments. - Consultant level
Advancement to become a consultant is after the Certificate of Completion of Training (CCT) is obtained and completion of the specialist training programme. To become a consultant, doctors apply directly using their CV, with their academic reputation playing a part in the application process. They have to undergo interviews to secure the position. - Run-through training
Some specialties can be entered directly after the foundation programme. Some can be joined after finishing the core training programme too. This is due to the merging of core training and specialist training in these cases. This is ideal for doctors who decide what they want to do early in their career.
When you are formulating your concise response, it certainly is a good idea to include statements or things that you mentioned in your Personal Statement. Ideally the interview panel want to have a good clear answer as to why you want to become a doctor and that you know what this entails. If you are unsure on how to answer the question, “Why do you want to become a doctor?” there’s no harm in coming to us for a Mock Interview practice session, we are happy to help.
Our Mock interview medicine tutoring is reasonably priced and we go through every single aspect of this question. All our tutors at University Expert are highly qualified and have done this for many years. During and after the mock interview, we will give you unbiased honest feedback so that you can improve further. Many students are so impressed with our initial mock session that they quite often book further sessions to keep on improving their techniques so that when they do have the interview at Kings medical school, they feel confident and the answers are approached with confidence so that they have a good chance of getting offered to study Medicine at King’s.