How to talk about work experience in a medicine interview

Applicants often worry that their work experience is not impressive enough: no hospital placement, no shadowing a surgeon, just a care home or a pharmacy counter or a weekend job. The worry is understandable, and mostly misplaced.

Medical schools have said for years that what you learnt matters more than where you went. The Medical Schools Council’s guidance on work experience encourages people-facing roles of any kind, including volunteering and caring, because they show you what working with people who need help is really like. The interviewer is listening for reflection: what you noticed, what it taught you about the job, and what it taught you about yourself.

Reflection, not a list

Compare these two answers:

The second one is from a less “impressive” setting and is far stronger. It is specific, it shows something learnt from watching professionals, and it shows a change in the speaker.

A structure that works

1. What you saw or did, in one or two sentences. One moment, not the whole placement.
2. What you noticed: a skill, a difficulty, a decision, how someone was treated.
3. What you learnt about the job or about healthcare.
4. What it means for you: how it shaped your motivation, or what you are doing differently because of it.

This works for any setting and for any question that touches on experience, including “Tell me about your work experience”, “What did you learn from volunteering?” and “Describe a time you saw good communication.”

Choosing your moments

Before the interview, write down five or six specific moments from your experience. For each, note what it shows. Good moments tend to show:

• Communication done well or badly, such as an explanation, a difficult conversation or a misunderstanding.
• Teamwork across roles: nurses, healthcare assistants, receptionists, pharmacists, porters.
• The reality of the job: pressure, paperwork, uncertainty, emotional strain, things that cannot be fixed.
• Patient-centred care: someone’s wishes being respected, or dignity being protected.
• Your own limits: something you found hard, and what you did about it.

Never share details that could identify a patient, even without a name. Interviewers will notice, and confidentiality is exactly the value they are testing.

If you could not get a clinical placement

Plenty of applicants cannot get hospital placements, and schools know it. Long-term caring roles, volunteering, part-time jobs dealing with the public, and online programmes that some schools and organisations offer all count. Say what you did, and reflect on it just as you would a ward placement. Do not apologise for it.

If an interviewer asks what you wish you had seen, answer honestly and show you have found out about it in other ways, for example by talking to doctors, reading or watching reputable material about the role.

Follow-up questions to practise

1. What was the most important thing you learnt from your work experience?

   One moment, one lesson, one change in you.

2. Tell me about a time you saw a doctor communicate well, or badly.

   Specific behaviour, its effect on the patient, what you took from it.

3. What surprised you about working in healthcare?

   Something real, such as the teamwork or the paperwork, not something flattering.

4. What did you find difficult?

   An honest difficulty and how you handled it shows insight.

5. What role did other members of the team play?

   Name roles and show respect for them.