Medicine Undergraduate Foundation

MMI Preparation – Skills

UCLan MMI rates your skills in the following areas:

• Interpreting information

• Decision-making

• Communicating clearly and effectively

• Critiquing information or situations

• Explanation of the transferable skills you acquired through your work

experience
Question from UCLan MMI - June 2017

• 2 minute video showing a bad consultation

between a doctor and a patient:

• Asked to comment on what the doctor did well

and what the doctor needed to improve (eg
posture, tone, eye contact)
Effective Doctor-Patient Communication
Why?

• Most time spent between practitioner and patient

• The most prevalent behaviour in a clinician’s lifetime
• Diagnose and treat disease
• Facilitate healing
• Establish and maintain a therapeutic relationship
• Offer information and educate
What are the key features of a good consultation?

In your groups prepare a list of the behaviours you would expect

to see in a good doctor-patient consultation
Therapeutic Nature of the Medical Encounter: CARE

• Help patients Cope with stress and illness or with bad news

• Activate patients’ participation in self care and wellbeing

• Increase patients’ sense of accountability, Responsible, self

esteem and confidence

• Empower patients’ own decision making about their health

Problems in Doctor-Patient Communication

• Patients’ concerns are not elicited

• Psychosocial and psychiatric problems are missed
• Patient and doctor do not agree on the main presenting
problem
• Patients’ most common complaint is the lack of information
provided by doctors
Watch these simulated consultations from the UK

Can you suggest any improvements?

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95Pm-D2ToS8

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygv4UQssoh0

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4Hx-nPrcaU

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HRmMuxzyRQ
Now watch this simulated consultation from the USA

• Watch the video and make notes about what went well and
could have been better.
• Compare your notes with the other members of your group
• Feedback
• Now role play this MMI station, ie one student be the
interviewer and the other the interviewee, with a 3rd student
reviewing
• Give each other feedback
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4wWClQhZaA
Areas to focus on

• Is the environment suitable for the consultation?

• Introduction and building rapport
• Active listening
• Psychosocial aspect
• Patient’s expectations and hidden agenda
• Explanations and plan of action
• Interaction with others
Comment from last year

As well as commenting on what the doctor did well and what

could have been better, explain why it is important that the
doctor did what he/she did, or why the doctor should not have
done what he/she did, eg.
• Doctor should not interrupt the patient because it is a sign of
disrespect, and the patient may feel discouraged from
continuing to describe his/her symptoms, so that the doctor
misses out on key information.
UCLan MMI rates your skills in the following areas:

• Interpreting information

• Decision-making

• Communicating clearly and effectively

• Critiquing information or situations

• Explanation of the transferable skills you acquired through your work

experience
The ‘counselling’ role-play

You will be required to provide advice and/or support to an actor playing the role
of a friend, relative or neighbour who has been affected by a particular event.
Try out the following situations:
• A friend confides in you that they have started taking recreational drugs at
weekends – you have noticed a deterioration in their schoolwork. Talk to
them.
• Your best friend tells you that they are thinking of dropping out of uni. Talk to
them.
• Your friend tells you that they have been selling pirated DVDs for the past 2
years and they are scared because on of their other friends has recently been
arrested for the same offence. Talk to them.
The ‘counselling’ role-play
• How to approach this station:
1. Make sure the setting is right
2. Let the other person talk
3. Show that you are listening
4. Ask open questions if possible
5. Avoid offering your own opinion
6. Consider following factors: physical, financial, social and psychological
7. Test expectations
8. Think about possible hidden agendas
9. Try to finish the conversation on a positive note
References

• The Medic Portal – Advice on how to approach role plays and

how to answer ‘empathy’ questions:

•
https://www.themedicportal.com/application-guide/medical-sc
hool-interview/mmi-interviews/mmi-role-play/

•
https://www.themedicportal.com/e-learning/interview/empath
y/