Setting up a Medical Society
Written by Matthew Lau 25 Jul 2020
Why?
With an increasing number of medical applicants each year, it’s becoming harder and harder to stand out from the crowd. Setting up and running your own MedSoc is a perfect way to shine in your personal statement and/or your interview!
Not only does it train some of the most important skills including leadership and communication but it also demonstrates passion for Medicine. Alongside this, when you develop content for your sessions, you’ll be conducting your own research and therefore furthering your own understanding as well.
For example, if you lead a debate about abortion or perhaps a lecture about the history of the NHS or even simply listening to a talk from a medical student, you’ll be able to develop a greater understanding of the medical profession and the intricacies surrounding it.
By having this deeper involvement, you will not only strengthen your medical school application but also gain a head start in medical school (and maybe even your career!). It may be a lot of work to set up and run but the return is definitely worth it.
How?
Some schools may already have an established MedSoc and if this includes yours, don’t worry! There’s always opportunities to set up similar societies such as a medical ethics society or another MedSoc with a different focus (e.g. instead of focusing on the application process, focus on hot topics within medicine or discussion about health articles).
When planning and organising it, you’ll probably need some friends or colleagues to work with. Get together and try planning a few sessions together along with some side projects such as a reading list you could offer.
If you’re stuck, we have some session ideas that you could work with:
Starter Activities
• Show a short clip of a medical show
How accurate is the medicine in this clip?
• Prepare a short 5-10 min talk on a BBC health article
Debates
• Should abortion be illegal?
• Ethics regarding organ donation
• Should people of “more value” receive priority?
• Designer babies and gene editing
• Should euthanasia be legalised?
• Privatisation of the NHS
Talks / Lectures
• An overview of the medical school application process
• Introduction to the entrance exams
• How to make the most out of work experience
• Introduction to the personal statement
• How to deal with interviews
• Hot topics in medicine
• How much do you know about the NHS?
• Scientific talks
• Is sugar our friend? Tackling the obesity crisis, what is social prescribing?
• Try to invite some medical students or doctors you may know to give a talk about their day to day life or what it’s really like to go into medicine
Related interview questions
What skills have you developed from starting your own MedSoc?
What difficulties did you encounter and how did you overcome them?
Tell me more about what you did in MedSoc (e.g. what lectures you did, what content you presented)
If you would like to know how to tackle questions like these, sign up for our interview course!
Through our course, you'll learn how to approach and develop answers for interview questions such as these and tailor it for your interview. Not only will we provide insight into how examiners assess you, you'll also be able to access higher-level techniques and insights into what other applicants often overlook.