UC Davis School of Medicine (MD) Medicine InterviewFormat, Questions & Prep Tips

Why UC Davis specifically — how does the school's primary care and rural medicine mission align with your career goals?

Reference the PRIME programmes, longitudinal integrated clerkship, and Sacramento region demographics. Avoid vague answers about "wanting to help people."

A farmworker presents to your rural clinic with symptoms consistent with pesticide exposure but is afraid to report it for fear of losing his job. How do you approach this situation?

Discuss patient autonomy, mandatory reporting obligations, OSHA/Cal-OSHA frameworks, and community health advocacy. This type of scenario is distinctively UC Davis.

You are a first-year medical student on a team where a senior resident dismisses a patient's pain complaint as exaggerated. How do you handle this?

Balance hierarchy respect with patient advocacy. Discuss how you would raise concerns professionally — direct conversation with the resident, escalation if needed — without being dismissive of the team.

A patient refuses a recommended blood transfusion on religious grounds, but their family is pressuring you to administer it while the patient is sedated. What do you do?

Centre patient autonomy and advance directives. Address the gap between surrogate authority and the expressed wishes of a competent adult. No covert treatment.

Tell me about an experience working with an underserved or marginalised community. What did you learn about structural barriers to health care?

Be specific and reflective. UC Davis values candidates who have moved beyond observation into active service or advocacy. Reference social determinants of health.

California is expanding Medi-Cal coverage to all income-eligible adults regardless of immigration status. What are the key implementation challenges?

Discuss workforce capacity, safety-net hospital funding, language access, undocumented patient trust, and continuity of care. Shows healthcare policy literacy.

Role play: You are a clinic volunteer. An elderly Spanish-speaking patient is confused about her discharge instructions. How do you help? (Actor plays the patient.)

Use simple language, non-verbal reassurance, ask-teach-back, and request a professional interpreter if available. Do not guess at medical instructions.

Should medical schools require a rural medicine rotation for all students? Defend your position.

Argue a position. Reference rural physician shortages (HRSA data), student career autonomy, curriculum trade-offs, and the public-school obligation to produce generalist physicians.

Describe a time you worked as part of a team where there was significant conflict. What was your role and what did you learn?

STAR structure. Focus on your contribution to resolution, not blame. Show emotional intelligence and collaborative problem-solving.

An attending asks you to document a procedure you did not personally witness. What do you do?

Clear ethical violation — accurate documentation is a cornerstone of medical professionalism and patient safety. Decline politely but firmly, and document what you actually know.

A station presents San Joaquin Valley data: childhood asthma ED visits cluster in zip codes near major agricultural and freeway corridors. Before recommending any intervention, what do you want to know about how this data was collected?

Interrogate the data: case ascertainment (ED visits miss managed cases), population denominators by zip code, air-quality and pesticide-drift exposure data, and whether clustering reflects exposure or just where uninsured families seek care. UC Davis values applicants who reason from evidence to Central Valley environmental health, not those who jump to conclusions.

A patient at a rural Northern California clinic has declined a colonoscopy you recommended, saying the nearest endoscopy centre is 90 minutes away and he can't take a day off farm work. How do you respond?

Meet the barrier, not the refusal. Validate the logistics, offer an evidence-based alternative he can do (FIT/stool-based testing), and problem-solve transport and scheduling. This reflects UC Davis's rural-access mission — access is a structural issue, not a compliance failure.

UC Davis runs a longitudinal integrated clerkship and rural-track training. How does learning medicine through continuity with the same patients and community over time — rather than block rotations — fit how you want to become a physician?

Show you understand what an LIC actually is (longitudinal relationships with patients, preceptors, and a community) and connect it to your values around continuity and rural/underserved care. Reference the real UC Davis model rather than speaking generically about clerkships.

Role play: You are a clinic volunteer. A farmworker patient is frustrated that he waited two hours and now must leave for his shift before being seen. (The interviewer plays the patient.)

De-escalate and respect his constraints: acknowledge the wait, apologise sincerely, find out what he urgently needs, and offer concrete options — flag him to the team, arrange a faster follow-up, or telehealth. Don't be defensive about clinic flow; centre his real economic pressure.

A 16-year-old comes to your rural clinic alone seeking confidential contraception. Her parents are well known in the small community. What are your obligations under California law and ethics?

Know that California allows minors to consent to confidential reproductive and sexual-health care. Honour confidentiality, assess safety and coercion, and counsel without involving parents against her wishes. Address the small-town confidentiality pressures specifically — a recognisable feature of rural practice UC Davis trains for.