Let’s all play doctor
Do you have what it takes to get through the Multiple Mini Interview?
How to prepare
While the MCAT (medical college admission test) exam reveals an applicant’s knowledge base, the MMI is designed to assess “soft skills”: communication, problem solving, judgment, life experience, ethics, professionalism, empathy and so on. Of course, being empathetic is not something you can simply study up on in the month before the interview. And that’s why the MMI is famously difficult to prepare for.
Common approaches include practising example questions that are posted online and reading up on medical ethics issues in academic journals. Some schools offer mock MMI sessions, but at least one successful applicant interviewed for this article chose not to take it. “I think I did well because I was just myself, genuine. I didn’t have formulated answers,” said first-year McMaster med student Rachel Lamont. “A lot of people had what they were going to say planned. That’s not natural.”
Rosenfeld also cautioned against practising. When asked how best to prepare, he quoted his colleague, a high-profile American neuroscientist: “The only way to prepare is to start reading when you’re 15, and read everything that you can.”
Door No. 1
The buzzer sounds. An applicant, standing with her back facing the interview room, turns around, finds a piece of paper posted to the door and has two minutes to read and think about this scenario: “Dr. Blair gives his patients sugar pills. He acknowledges that he uses the placebo effect. His reasoning is that it does no harm and makes people feel better. Consider the ethical problems that Dr. Blair’s behaviour might pose.” The buzzer sounds again and the applicant enters the room, introduces herself to the interviewer and begins discussing the problem for up to eight minutes.
This example is typical of MMI questions because it has no correct answer. Rosenfeld explains: “You can go either direction because some doctors use the placebo effect very effectively, very skilfully.” What’s important, he adds, is that applicants demonstrate an ability to consider and articulate both sides of an argument, then come to a position and be able to defend it.
The judges
Who is listening to the applicant wax on about the ethics of the placebo effect? Not expert profilers, but rather a mix of members of the local community, medical students and medical professionals.
The interviewers are given a general overview of how MMI works a couple of weeks in advance—but they don’t receive their specific MMI question and background information until a couple of hours before the interviews start. “We can’t risk giving those stations out ahead of time,” Rosenfeld explained. “If some applicant somewhere catches a glimpse of a station, there will be the devil to pay.”
Because interviewers aren’t experts on the topic they are assessing, they aren’t looking for in-depth knowledge from applicants. “One of the most important things is the attitude of the applicant and their mannerisms,” said Jeremy Hernandez, a second-year MD/Ph.D. student at McMaster, who has been an MMI applicant twice and an interviewer once. He stressed that how applicants communicate is just as important as what they say. “[The MMI] shows the person that you are, instead of the person you can practise to be,” he says.
