University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine (MD) Medicine Interview — Format, Questions & Prep Tips

What is your vision of Puerto Rico's healthcare system in 20 years, and what role do you see yourself playing in building it?

Show depth of knowledge about PR's healthcare challenges — physician workforce gaps, Medicaid funding, hurricane recovery, chronic disease burden. Be specific and optimistic without ignoring real constraints.

Why UPR Med specifically? What does training at the Medical Sciences Campus and Puerto Rico Medical Center offer that you cannot get elsewhere?

Reference the PRMC hospital complex's high-acuity volume, inter-professional campus, public health school collaboration, and the school's role as the backbone of PR's physician workforce.

A patient presents to your community health center with a condition that requires expensive medication their insurance does not cover. What do you do?

Discuss patient advocacy, pharmaceutical assistance programs, formulary alternatives, social worker involvement, and systemic advocacy — not just "refer to specialist".

Puerto Rico's physician-to-population ratio has declined significantly due to out-migration. What ethical obligations does a UPR-trained physician have toward the island?

Acknowledge personal autonomy while discussing the public benefit of the medical education you receive. Reference service obligation discussions, rural/underserved incentives (loan forgiveness, NHSC), and your personal commitment.

Describe a time you communicated a complex message to a non-expert audience. What strategies did you use?

STAR structure. Show iterative communication — checking comprehension, adjusting language, using analogies. Connect to the daily challenge of bilingual patient communication.

What public health or epidemiological challenge facing Puerto Rico would you most want to study, and why?

Reference specific PR challenges: high diabetes/hypertension rates, cancer disparities, Zika legacy, leptospirosis after hurricane flooding, or the opioid crisis in urban areas. Show genuine intellectual curiosity.

A member of your team consistently dismisses patient concerns using language that feels culturally disrespectful. You are a medical student. How do you respond?

Address power dynamics honestly. Discuss private direct conversation, consulting a senior student or resident mentor, and formal reporting if behavior is harmful — while managing your own professional standing.

Tell me about the most significant community service experience you have had. How did it prepare you to be a public health physician?

Be specific about the population served and what you learned about structural barriers. Connect to UPR's public mission — not just clinical skill development.

A patient who speaks only Spanish and has low health literacy needs to understand a new diabetes diagnosis. Walk me through how you would conduct this conversation.

Demonstrate teach-back technique, plain language, culturally appropriate dietary examples from Puerto Rican cuisine, involve family appropriately, and address fear and stigma.

Should UPR School of Medicine require graduates to practice in Puerto Rico for a minimum number of years? Defend your answer.

Engage honestly with both sides: forced service vs. voluntary commitment, precedent in National Health Service Corps, brain drain risk vs. physician autonomy. Show nuanced policy thinking.

Role-play: a middle-aged man at your community clinic in San Juan has just been told he has hypertension and needs to start daily medication, but he says 'me siento bien, no necesito pastillas.' Talk him through it.

Show culturally grounded teach-back: explain silent disease in plain Spanish-inflected terms, connect to family and longevity, address cost and side-effect fears, and agree a concrete first step. Demonstrate the bilingual, relationship-centered care UPR's mission demands.

Puerto Rico's diabetes prevalence is markedly higher than the US mainland average. If you were handed clinic-level data showing your patients' average HbA1c is rising year over year, how would you investigate why?

Reason like a population-health physician: disaggregate by neighborhood, access to medication, post-hurricane disruption, diet, and follow-up gaps before blaming patient non-adherence. Show you read data to find system causes, not to assign individual fault.

How do you think Puerto Rico's experience with Hurricanes Irma and Maria should change the way physicians here are trained?

Connect disaster preparedness, dialysis and oxygen-dependent patient continuity, supply-chain fragility, and mental-health aftermath to concrete curriculum implications. Ground it in PR's lived reality rather than abstract emergency-medicine theory.

You need to obtain informed consent from an elderly patient for a procedure, but her adult daughter keeps answering every question on her behalf. How do you handle this respectfully?

Honor familismo while protecting the patient's autonomy and capacity. Show you would gently center the patient, address the daughter's good intentions, and ensure consent is genuinely the patient's — a daily reality in Puerto Rican family-centered care.

A pharmaceutical shortage means you have enough of a critical medication for only some of the patients who need it this week. How do you decide who receives it?

Apply transparent allocation principles — clinical urgency, likelihood of benefit, consistency — and reject favouritism or first-come-first-served alone. Note PR's real vulnerability to supply disruptions, and the duty to advocate up the system for resupply.