 What is up guys karma medic here and welcome back to another dose I'm back today with another video in my medicine MMI interview series where I cover the most common and most difficult questions That can come up in an MMI interview and I give you my opinion on how I think you can best answer them and some red flags And things that you should avoid if you don't know who I am My name is Nasser and I'm a second year medical student at Kings College London If you guys want to see more medical school related content from me Do feel free to subscribe to this channel like this video and also follow me on Instagram All right, so for today's video I'm going to be covering two different types of MMI questions The first type is the classic what five things would you bring to X situation? And the second type of question is a classic data interpretation and data analysis question Today's video is sponsored by Kaplan Which amongst other things is a great resource to use for interview preparation The great thing about Kaplan is that their questions are written by medical students and doctors who have sat in on medical school Interviews so they know the types of questions that are most likely to come up. All right, so let's jump straight into the questions I'm going to be reading out the questions to you guys and then giving you my opinion on how I think you can best answer it and I'll sprinkle in some guidance and tips provided by Kaplan in there as well So the first question that I'm going to tackle is the what five things would you bring in X situation type question so this question can present itself in many different ways and generally the theme is that you are told that you're going on a Camping trip or you're going abroad or you're gonna be alone or something along those lines and you need to bring five items What do you bring now? I want to say when answering this question Don't worry about choosing the perfect five items that you need to take on this experience There's no extremely right or extremely wrong answer in this question The most important thing is that you can justify why you've chosen those items and then they have some sort of Relevance to the situation and of course the medicine and the bigger picture The idea is that you want to be practical and you want to be able to defend every single choice that you make So there's no point in saying that you want to bring a helicopter to a camping trip And there's no point in justifying that by saying because it's cool for every item that you do choose You should be able to say why it is that you chose it what it's gonna help you do What are some of the uses that it has like I said? There's no right or wrong answer as long as you choose items that you can back up and you can defend why you've chosen them You're gonna be okay. Since this is a medical school interview You always want to keep that context in mind You want to have the main points of empathy emotion mental health making someone feel comfortable You want to be thinking about those things when choosing your items and explaining why it is that you've chosen them All right, so now let's take a look at the first question provided by Kaplan and think about how we can answer it A friend calls you from the hospital with the news that he's been diagnosed with acute appendicitis He has asked you to bring a hospital bag to him as soon as possible You only have space to bring five items for him for an unspecified amount of time What do you bring and why now before I give you my opinion on how to answer this question? Do leave a comment down below with the five items that you would bring to your friend to this patient Who's in hospital and that way later we can compare our answers and have a discussion So what are some of the things that you want to think about here? I think a trap that you can easily fall into is to hear or read acute appendicitis And then start going off and trying to show off all the medical knowledge that you have around this condition And how it can be treated do not focus on the medical aspect of this question too strongly The question is asking you about the five items that you would bring to this patient who is your friend You should spend only a short amount of time talking about the appendicitis in a way that's relevant to your answer So you might say since he's been diagnosed with appendicitis He might need surgery if that's the case He'll need to spend a couple of days in hospital and so the five items that I would bring are blah blah blah So now to choosing the actual items There's no perfectly right or wrong answer here and you want to put yourself in the position of the patient If you were someone sitting in hospital for two or three days and you rang up your friend and you were like Hey, I need you to bring me X Y and Z. What would you want? What is it that you would need? So for example, if you're in hospital for a couple of days You're not going to be able to be as hygienic as you would like It might be hard for you to get out of bed especially after surgery you might be in a lot of pain So you won't be able to clean yourself as well You won't be able to brush your teeth at night, etc So something that I would suggest is to bring something that would increase the comfort of the patient the comfort of your friend So you might want to bring them a toothbrush and some toothpaste and then a clean change of clothes That will help them feel more comfortable in their hospital bed They'll be able to stay more clean and more happy. You might also say that since the patient is going to be spending a lot of time in bed They're probably going to be quite bored. They might be lonely at times And so you might want to bring them something that will give them entertainment So for example a book is a good idea because it won't strain their eyes if they're looking at it for a long period of time And you can also mention that the book can be something simple to read nothing too advanced because they might be sedated They might be tired something that's nice and easy to read You might also suggest bringing headphones that they can listen to their favorite music and pastime in that way Another thing that you might actually say is that what you want to bring is yourself and you as company Of course your friend and your patient is going to be sitting in bed for a long time They might get really bored they might get really lonely And so having a close friend that they can talk to and pastime with is going to be something that will really improve their mental health And happiness while they're staying in hospital So yeah, the main point of this question is that you want to bring a variety of items that will address both the physical comfort of the patient And the mental health and the emotional aspect of the patient You don't want to choose many items that are too similar You want to provide a variety of items to show that you're able to think outside the box All right So moving on swiftly to the second question provided by Kaplan and that's the data analysis and interpretation question This is a question that's almost always going to come up in an MMI interview Data interpretation is something very important to doctors and they're doing it all the time So it's likely that you'll be tested on this as well How this question works is that you're presented with either a graph or a table And i'll put up a picture somewhere over here so that you guys can follow what it is that i'm talking about And then you're asked to describe this picture and interpret or analyze it Usually you're asked these two questions separately So first you're asked to describe and then you're asked to analyze or interpret And if you are asked like that make sure you separate the two Do leave a comment down below letting me know how you would describe it or how you would interpret the data that you see in the graph So that we can compare our answers later. So let's first start off with describing So when you're asked to describe a graph what you want to do is basically state what you can see You want to say what the title is what it is that this graph is describing You want to talk about the axes. What are they displaying? What are their units, etc And just basically describing what is it that you see in this graph? The first thing that you can see is that this is a bar graph You always want to say what kind of a graph is this is a bar graph a histogram a pie chart scatter plot, etc Etc. And what is it showing you want to look to the title? So this is a bar graph that shows the female mortality rates for breast cancer in england and wales in 2010 2014 and 2018 on the x-axis we can see four different age groups each with a range of 19 years Spanning from 21 years old to 100 years old on the y-axis We can see the number of mortalities from zero to 45 000 You can be more succinct here in your description But I like to provide some details that the examiner knows that I know everything that's in this graph So now we've basically described this graph. We've said what kind of graph is it? What is the title? What do the axes show and what are their units a basic description? So now after that you're going to be asked to interpret or analyze the data And when you're asked to do this try not to just look at the very surface level of what's going on You always want to say what it is that you see what are the trends? What is this graph showing but also a possible reason for this? Why could it be that this is happening and that's what's going to score you the top marks in this section You want to make sure that you can give a reason for the descriptions that you're seeing So let me give you guys a couple of examples So overall we can see that from 2010 till 2018 within all age ranges There has been a decrease in mortality rates with the biggest decrease in mortality rates occurring in the 61 to 80 age range between 2010 and 2014 So stating the overall trend but also where you see the biggest change and where you see the smallest change can also be useful Now I can say why I think that this is happening So for example, mortality rates could have decreased due to earlier detection rates of breast cancer and or better care after detection So as the years have passed on technology has improved and we have better tests to detect breast cancer earlier So we're likely to see less deaths from it Another thing that I can see in this graph Is that the highest mortality rates are seen in the 61 to 80 age group And I can say that this is likely because the risk of getting breast cancer Increases greatly in this group and that could be due to a variety of reasons associated with old age For example a weakened immune system now on the other side of the coin I can see that the lowest mortality rates are seen between the ages of 21 and 40 And in fact they look like they're almost zero And this could be due to the fact that cancer tends to present itself in older age Once the cells have had time to accumulate deleterious mutations We can also see that the mortality rates drop in the eldest age group So we might expect that as people get older, there's just more and more mortality due to breast cancer But we see that in the 81 to 100 age range group There is less mortality than in the 61 to 80 now This could mean that the risk of getting breast cancer in that age group is lower than the age group of 61 to 80 Or that people in this age group have diseases that are leading to their death other than breast cancer So you can see that we've described this graph and given an interpretation and analysis of its content While proposing potential reasons for why we are seeing those trends. Why are we seeing those interpretations? And that's the most important thing that's going to score you the top marks in this section All right, and that is it for me for today Once again, thank you to Kaplan for sponsoring this video and providing the questions that I covered If you guys are looking for more questions to help you prepare for MMI interviews with expert guidance on how to answer them You can check out Kaplan's website in the description down below. Thank you guys for watching this video I hope you found it useful Don't forget to leave a like on this video and subscribe to my channel if you want to see more video content from me You can also follow me on instagram if that interests you and i'll see you in the next one. Peace