Sheffield Questions Flashcards
Station 1: If you are successful in your application you may be spending 5 years living and studying in Sheffield. What can you tell me about the City of Sheffield and the University of Sheffield?
UNIVERSITY
• Large university with around 20,000 undergraduates -> Lots going on
• Top 50 most international universities in the world -> Meet a whole variety of people, which prepares you for medicine
• Excellent research output
• 20 million pound student union -> Voted No. 1 several times + Over 400 clubs and societies -> Chess society and debating society would interest me -> Lots of medics’ teams
• Joint 1st for library services (e.g. the Diamond library) and has excellent library facilities
CITY (Yorkshire)
• Part of the city includes the Peak District National Park -> Good for relaxation + lots of green spaces despite being known as an industrial area traditionally
• Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday -> Football fan myself
• Culture is very rich -> Music includes bands such as Arctic Monkeys and BMTH, art include Phlegm graffiti
• Affordable city -> Bus fares for 1 pounds with student card
Station 1: What do you know about the Sheffield MBChB curriculum?
- Phase 1 - Introductory clinical competence (Year 1) -> Systems-based approach to basic function and structure of the body, as well as public health, ethics, etc. Not all teaching is in the Medical School, but also in clinical skills units. Frequent GP placements and 2 week hospital placement to accustom students to working with doctors. Lot of self-directed and PBL study. Examination must be passed to progress to phase 2.
- Phase 2 - Basic clinical competencies (Year 2-3) -> Starts with 6 week research project. Develop existing knowledge and start gaining practical skills on the wards. Much more time spent in a clinic setting.
- Phase 3 - Extended clinical competencies (Year 3-4) -> More specialised experience of primary and secondary care. Emphasis on evidence-based learning. Encouraged to learn to exploration and teamwork.
- Phase 4 - Advanced clinical competencies (Year 5) -> Final preparation for becoming a doctor. More placements.
- Generally a large emphasis is placed on integrating pre-clinical and clinical as per GMC guidelines.
- Can integrate after phase 2 -> Public health, nutrition and antimicrobial resistance.
- In 4th year, there is an elective period where you can go abroad.
- Lot of emphasis on research -> Recently seen developments in cancer studies. National Sports and Exercise Medicine Centre of Excellence is new -> Interests me personally
- Newly rebuild Health Sciences Library and the Medical School is based on an open-plan study area.
Station 1: Medical schools around the world receive far more applications than there are places. This means that many excellent applicants will receive no offers. If this happens to you, what will you do? (Explore determination to study medicine)
- I would reassess my application, ask for feedback and see what to improve on -> Like an audit process
- I would focus on improving my personal qualities through volunteering and work experience -> For example, if weakness is an understanding of current issues, then I would read around better
- Understandably, I could only re-apply so many times, so eventually I would most likely decide to enter a career similar to medicine, such as nutrition or biomedical science, which give me a similar intellectual satisfaction -> Graduate entry into medicine if possible
Station 2: What inspired you to want to become a doctor?
- No single defining moment
* Usual answer, minus the specific article publishing
Station 2: Tell me about a patient that you saw during your work experience or volunteering who inspired you to find out more about what was wrong with them.
- Laparoscopic operation
- Reduces the volume of the stomach, leaving behind a sleeve
- Makes the person feel full quicker, by reducing volume and by reducing the production of ghrelin
- Can result in vomiting and digestive problems
- Prompted me to think about preventative medicine
- Published articles
- Continued reading -> BMJ article by David Ludwig
- Blab on about nutrition
Station 2: Do you think that non-emergency services should be provided 7 days a week in the NHS?
WHAT
• Study suggested that patients admitted on a weekend suffered 15% greater mortality than on weekdays
• Survey was disputed for not considering all factors
• Theresa May wants: (1) GPs to be open on Saturdays and Sundays, as well as longer hours. (2) Better provision of services in hospital on weekends, including seeing consultants faster and providing scans, etc. quicker
• Led to backlash from doctors and BMA, including #ImInWorkJeremy
FOR
• Could improve quality of service
• Consultants able to opt-out of non-emergency weekend work currently
• Extra funding being promised for this
• Some claims that doctors will not work more, just more evenly distributed
AGAINST
• Some studies show little improvement in clinical outcome
• Strain on doctors + services already stretched
• Stephen Hawking accused government of “cherry-picking” evidence to support this idea
• Problem lies in funding
• Encourages doctors quitting and fewer medical school applicants
• Alternative ideas of non-emergency numbers e.g. 111
Station 3: What can you tell me about the General Medical Council’s code of conduct for doctors?
• GMC is in charge of 4 things
• Publishes Good Medical Practice, which has 4 main domains:
1) Knowledge, skills and performance
-> Make the care of your patient your first concern.
-> Provide a good standard of practice and care.
2) Safety and quality
-> Take prompt action if you think that patient safety, dignity or comfort is being compromised.
-> Protect and promote the health of patients and the public.
3) Communication, partnership and teamwork
-> Treat patients as individuals and respect their dignity + confidentiality
-> Work in partnership with patients.
-> Work with colleagues in the ways that best serve patients’ interests.
4) Maintaining trust
-> Be honest and open and act with integrity.
-> Never discriminate unfairly against patients or colleagues.
-> Never abuse your patients’ trust in you or the public’s trust in the profession.
Station 3: Do you think it might ever be appropriate to breach a patient’s confidentiality? Can you give any examples?
- Implied consent has been given by the patient (e.g. to tell other team members, unless otherwise specified)
- Information required by court/judge
- When the interest to society or others of disclosing the information outweighs the benefit to the patient of keeping the information confidential
- Notifying authorities of notifiable diseases (e.g. mumps) -> Not HIV
- Suspected cases of child abuse or neglect
- Informing the DVLA if a patient’s condition may affect their driving
- When the information can help fight against terrorism or in identifying a driver who committed a road traffic offence
Station 3: While working at your Saturday job in a shop you find that one of your colleagues has arrived at work smelling of alcohol. They appear to be intoxicated, and you know that they drove to work. What actions would you take?
- Quietly take the co-worker to the side and attempt to converse wth them
- Ease into conversation -> Try to ask about their morning and what they’ve been up to
- Explain my concerns and suggest that the colleague goes home or sobers up in a back room
- Offer to cover shift and organise transport home for the colleague
- If customer safety has been compromised, report this and immediately try and sort out effects
- Meet up with the colleague at a later time and explain the implications of their actions and the necessity to change
Station 4: Tell me about a time when you have made a positive impact on someone else’s life.
- Not in a healthcare setting, but has allowed me to develop skills necessary in a clinical environment
- Football volunteering -> Dealing with a variety of scenarios
- First, child who cries when he concedes -> Continued encouragement over time, building his confidence
- Second, small child who gets pushed over -> Empathy shown
- Thirdly, situation where fighting occurred -> Pacifier who sorts out conflict
- This is all made more difficult by having to manage multiple tasks at once -> Refereeing and managing
- Received chocolates at Christmas, which meant a lot to me
Station 4: Based on your work or voluntary experiences, what do you think are the challenges of delivering quality care to patients?
- Need for continuous learning -> Revalidation and audits -> Professor in bariatric surgery
- Integrity and learning from mistakes -> Bawa-Garba + communication skills -> Consultant owning up to sub-par surgery results
- Long hours -> Physical and mental strain -> 5hr mastectomy -> 48 hour work week max. on average
- Building a rapport with a range of people -> Varying consultations in London -> Being able to end it when necessary
- Making decisions when necessary
- Time pressures -> UK vs Poland
- Work-life balance
Station 4: How do you think demonstrating respect and dignity impacts on patients?
- Certainly always improves patient satisfaction and trust in the profession
- However, in some situations it may be more critical in others
- One might argue that many young patients just want a diagnosis and the correct drugs and there is little comforting required for most of their acute illnesses
- On the other hand, a patient suffering with a chronic illness will require much more time, support and respect from the doctor -> Holistic care may improve overall outcomes
- Also essential with mental illness and palliative care
- Lack of respect and dignity can be devastating as the patient might outright refuse the treatment offered or go and see another doctor, which wastes resources
- Example from work experience: Doctor having to send away venous ulcer patient due to time pressures, but managing to do this in a dignifying manner
Station 5: Studying medicine can be intense, so maintaining a work-life balance is important. How do you relax and unwind?
Purely non-academic: • Football -> Managing, refereeing and coaching • Tennis • Chess • Running -> County level Partly academic: • Debating -> President Related to studies: • Nutrition interest -> Allows me to blend my free time reading with staying fit and healthy, as well as developing interests in medicine
Station 5: Medical students are selected from the best and the brightest students around the world. How will you cope with moving from an environment where you were one of the best students to one where everyone has a similar level of ability?
- Personally, I’m a person who strives for small incremental improvement over time, rather than always wanting to be the best -> During GCSEs, I was more inclined to share flashcards with my colleagues than try to achieve better grades than them
- Close-knit PBL sessions and activities allow me to learn from others instead of competing with them, but at the same time ensuring that I live up to the same high level of effort
- Try to excel in other areas apart from academic studies -> e.g. Involvement in societies, etc.
- Understand that learning at medical school is so that my clinical skills will be as good as they can be, rather than to ace exams
Station 5: As a doctor you will have to break bad news and deal with things when they go wrong. How do you think you will cope with this emotionally?
- Separating work and personal life -> Writing list of things down at the end of the day to keep mind clean at the end of the day
- When breaking bad news, always find a balance between optimism and not over-promising -> GP example
- Reinforce idea of learning from your mistakes rather than engaging in a blame culture, so that I am more comfortable with my mistakes
- Continuing my free time activities to take away from the general stress
- Finding colleagues to share stresses wth, so that a build up of emotion doesn’t affect patients
- Understanding that frequently a situation is beyond your control
- Seeing a GP if an issue is affecting my mental health
