I have an MMI interview coming up, and thought that I should add to an existing thread instead of starting another one.
Some people say that MMI interviews can not be prepared for and/or are too difficult to prepare for, but there are some resources out there that provide practice questions and should make interviewees more prepared for the format.
Here are some:
(1)
Paper on MMI with several examples (these particular examples appear all over the net, so I feel that they've become cliched)
(2)
Document with a bunch of MMI scenarios (haven't seen most of these elsewhere, so they look pretty useful)
(3)
Overview of MMI interview style for a physical therapy school (didn't find this too useful, but it provides an overview of the possile station types)
(4)
Doing Right (a book that provides a framework for medical ethics problems and plenty of case studies. This resource been mentioned in several other threads on SDN)
Essentially there are a couple of aspects that need to be balanced in any medical ethics problem:
-
autonomy (as opposed to paternalism, the patient needs to make her own decisions about treatment based on their values and beliefs)
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justice (is the decision fair to others? the cliched example is using a respirator for a 'brain dead' patient who has no chance of recovery even though another patient could potentially derive more value from this machine)
-
beneficence (is the planned intervention really helping the patient? how much? crude example: ordering a full code at the insistence of family members for a patient who has no reasonable chance of recovery is not beneficial)
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non-maleficence (not doing any kind of harm. E.g., manipulating a patient into agreeing to undergo a test with almost no clinical utility for the physician's personal financial gain)
Websites like
Wiki also discuss these topics, so they are
nothing groundbreaking.
(5) Specific MMI question examples from another SDN member:
there were like 7 rooms all with weird prompts that you read and then discussed for like 5 minutes (?) with a physician/med student/adcom.
One was the why do you want to be a physician?
Also, your friend has a gambling habit and ask for money, what do you do? What do you think of building casinos in Ohio?
How do you help a student in your class whose parent just died and wants to drop out?
Something about drug reps wanting to take your out on a dinner
Another dealt with how do you react to someone with a weird religion and their refusal to receive treatment
So it looks like preparation is possible. Having a framework in mind for dealing with questions might help, and being able to think very quickly would definitely help as well.
For example, after reading the following sample question I was completely taken aback:
Station 2: Aspartame (Critical Thinking)A message that recently appeared on the Web warned readers of the dangers of aspartame (artificial sweetener Nutrasweet, Equal) as a cause of an epidemic of multiple sclerosis (a progressive chronic disease of the nervous system) and systemic lupus (a multisystem auto-immune disease). The biological explanation provided was that, at body temperature, aspartame releases wood alcohol (methanol), which turns into formic acid, which 'is in the same class of drugs as cyanide and arsenic.' Formic acid, they argued, causes metabolic acidosis. Clinically, aspartame poisoning was argued to be a cause of joint pain, numbness, cramps, vertigo, headaches, depression, anxiety, slurred speech and blurred vision. The authors claimed that aspartame remains on the market because the food and drug industries have powerful lobbies in Congress. They quoted Dr Russell Blaylock, who said, 'The ingredients stimulate the neurons of the brain to death, causing brain damage of varying degrees.'
Critique this message, in terms of the strength of the arguments presented and their logical consistency. Your critique might include an indication of the issues that you would like to delve into further before assessing the validity of these claims.
There is no way that I would have come up with a coherent answer in under 2 minutes! So, now I know that I might have trouble with the time pressure.
Does anyone else have resources they would recommend? I am mainly looking for practice questions. I feel that the more MMI type questions I am exposed to, the easier it will be for the real ones.
