CUSM School of Medicine (MD) Medicine Interview — Format, Questions & Prep Tips

Why CUSM and why the Inland Empire — what specifically draws you to training in one of California's most underserved regions?

Reference the physician shortage in the IE, the Latino and low-income patient population, Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, and your specific commitment to community health and safety-net medicine. Avoid generic answers.

Tell me about a clinical experience at a community health center, FQHC, or safety-net hospital. What did you observe and learn?

Be specific and reflective. CUSM values clinical experience in settings similar to what students will encounter during training. Show genuine engagement with the patient population, not just clinical skills.

A patient who is undocumented presents with uncontrolled Type 2 diabetes and is unable to afford insulin. What are your responsibilities as their physician?

Address 340B drug pricing, patient assistance programs, Medi-Cal emergency coverage (available to undocumented patients in California), community health centers, and the physician's advocacy role.

You are seeing a Spanish-speaking monolingual patient who has a new diagnosis of hypertension. How do you conduct this encounter?

Use professional interpretation (phone or in-person) — not a family member. Teach-back method for confirming understanding of the diagnosis, medication instructions, and follow-up plan. Demonstrate cultural humility throughout.

A patient comes to your clinic requesting a prescription for an antibiotic they saw advertised online. You believe the indication is not appropriate. How do you handle this?

Address patient-centered communication, antibiotic stewardship, overprescription risks, and how to validate the patient's concern while explaining your clinical reasoning without being dismissive.

What does "health equity" mean to you, and how does it differ from "equality" in healthcare?

Show conceptual clarity: equality = same treatment for everyone; equity = treatment tailored to level the playing field based on need. Reference the Inland Empire context — populations that require more resources to achieve comparable outcomes.

Describe an experience where you worked as part of a team to solve a complex problem. What was your role and what did you learn?

CUSM trains for team-based care. Show collaborative skills, ability to listen, adapt roles, and keep patient outcomes central. Avoid positioning yourself as the sole solver.

California has among the highest Medi-Cal enrollment rates in the US. What are the challenges of being a physician who primarily sees Medi-Cal patients?

Address reimbursement rates (historically low), administrative burden, the quality of care Medi-Cal patients deserve versus systemic barriers, and the physician's role in advocating for adequate public insurance funding.

How would you tell a patient that their cancer screening test came back positive and they need further evaluation?

SPIKES protocol: Set up, Perception check, Invitation, Knowledge delivery, Emotions/empathy, Strategy/summary. Do not give false reassurance. Allow silence. Check understanding before ending the conversation.

What does it mean to be a physician in a community where you are a guest — where your patients have lived for generations and you have just arrived?

Cultural humility, anti-paternalism, community asset recognition. Show that you understand the physician's role as a partner in health, not just a technical expert who arrives to fix problems.

A station shows you a table of HbA1c control rates across CUSM's affiliated clinics: a downtown San Bernardino site reports 38% of diabetic patients at goal, while a wealthier suburban site reports 71%. What questions do you ask of this data before drawing conclusions?

Interrogate the data before interpreting it: differences in patient panel (insurance mix, food access, language), staffing and continuity, whether the denominator counts no-shows, and measurement intervals. Resist concluding the downtown clinicians are worse — point to social determinants and resourcing as the likeliest drivers, consistent with CUSM's safety-net mission.

Role play: You volunteer at an Inland Empire community health fair. A man in his 50s with no insurance tells you he stopped his blood-pressure pills months ago because 'they make me feel worse and I can't afford them anyway.' (The interviewer plays the patient.)

Do not lecture or diagnose as a non-physician. Acknowledge the cost and side-effect concerns as legitimate, explore what 'feel worse' means, and connect him concretely to an FQHC, sliding-scale pharmacy, or 340B program. Use teach-back and warm hand-off rather than abstract advice.

A long-time patient at your safety-net clinic tells you she has been using a curandero and herbal remedies alongside the medication you prescribed. How do you respond?

Cultural humility, not dismissal. Many Inland Empire Latino patients integrate traditional healing. Ask what she is taking and why, screen genuinely for herb-drug interactions, and find common ground rather than forcing a choice between systems. Preserve trust so she keeps disclosing.

CUSM is a young school still building its research and graduate-medical-education footprint. How would you contribute to and benefit from a program that is still establishing itself, rather than an older institution with deep infrastructure?

Frame the early-stage school as an opportunity for ownership — building community partnerships, shaping student-run clinics, founding interest groups. Be honest that you have weighed the trade-offs (less established research, evolving match record) and explain why the mission fit outweighs them for you.

A pharmaceutical company offers your under-resourced community clinic free samples of an expensive new diabetes drug. The samples would help a few patients now but the drug is unaffordable long term. Do you accept them?

Weigh immediate benefit against the sustainability trap — patients started on a sample they cannot continue suffer worse rebound. Discuss conflict of interest, formulary and 340B alternatives, and the difference between charity that creates dependence and advocacy that builds durable access. There is no clean answer; show structured reasoning.