The NHS is the UK’s healthcare system which, at the fundamental level, has 6 core values that underpin it. Therefore it’s understandable that many medical schools love to draw upon these values during your interviews, so knowing what they are and understanding how they can apply to you can really help boost your interview preparations!
That’s exactly what we’ll explore in this guide, so let’s explore what these six pillars mean and how they may be relevant during your medicine interview.
Written by Ayma Ahmed
What Are The NHS Core Values?
There are 6 main core values that underpin everything that the NHS does from treating patients in hospitals to caring for them at home. These values first arose from the NHS constitution, which outlines the objective of the NHS, the rights and responsibilities of all parties in the NHS as well as the guiding principles. Following these principles are key to becoming a good doctor.
So what are the 6 values?
Working together for patients
Arguably the most significant value underpinning the NHS, it outlines that the patient and their health is at the core of what we do. It states that staff ranging from doctors to dieticians to even porters all place the needs of patients above all and play an essential role in helping support patients.
Everyone Counts
This principle is getting at the idea that no matter the patient or their needs, we as doctors in the NHS will best support patients both on an individual basis as well as the community on a wider scale. This may involve making difficult decisions regarding resource allocations, but at its core ensures that we are treating patients equally and with equity.
Improving lives
The NHS is continuously aiming to help improve the health and well-being of the patients under its care. This can involve helping to treat patients who interact with the healthcare system as well as through wider-scale projects such as clinical audits, new service improvements and acting on patient feedback.
Compassion
As healthcare professionals everything we do for patients must be done with kindness and empathy. Patients will often present as extremely distressed, worried and concerned in regard to their health. As medical professionals, being empathetic and providing comfort to these patients no matter how small or insignificant our interventions may seem is key.
Commitment to quality of care
The NHS is continuously striving to improve the level of support we can provide to its users. It is key that we aim to improve the quality of care we provide by ensuring that we take on board feedback and implement it within our practice, whether this is on a smaller scale throughout continual professional development projects or on a wider scale in regard to the way the system runs.
Respect and dignity
Every individual that enters our healthcare system must be respected no matter their ethnicity, race, sexuality or gender. As healthcare professionals, we must respect every individual’s attitude to health, commitment in life as well as their own priorities.
So now that we have a better understanding of what these core values are, let’s see how you may be asked this during interviews.
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NHS Core Values in Medicine Interviews
There are many ways that the topic of NHS Core Values may come up in your Panel interviews and MMIs, often the best way to implement them is by ensuring that they are the core of your answers.
For example, if asked about teamwork and its importance in medicine, an easy way to integrate this would be highlighting the NHS core value of ‘Working Together for Patients’. However, you may be asked a direct question in regards to core values, so having a robust understanding of what they are and their importance to you as a doctor is key.
An example of one such question is:
Example Medicine Interview Question
Can you discuss how the NHS core value of ‘Compassion’ is key for you as a future doctor?
There’s no set way of answering this however an example response to this may be:
Model Answer
The NHS Core value of compassion underlies the principle that doctors must respond with kindness and humanity to each patient that we see. Each and every patient we see will often be presenting in a vulnerable state and will be experiencing a lot of distress, so as a doctor, my role will be to support the patient and help relieve as much of this as possible.
This was something that I witnessed in my work experience, where I saw a consultation where the patient opened up about struggling with body image issues to a doctor. The patient was visibly distressed and felt overwhelmed by their self-esteem issues.
The doctor throughout this consultation displayed compassion by actively listening to the patient’s concerns, pausing to allow the patient to open up uninterrupted and providing the patient with tissues and a glass of water as forms of comfort. As a result of this compassion, the patient left the consultation feeling more supported and was referred to charities that could further support them through their struggles.
This goes to show that acting as a compassionate individual and providing support no matter how small or big that is, can have a significant impact on a patient and their outcomes.
This is just one way of answering this question, and of course, there are a multitude of ways to approach this. However, reflecting on an experience that you witnessed of compassionate practice, it makes your answer much more reflective regarding the importance of compassion.
It is important that no matter the core value you are asked about, you not only express an understanding of what that core value means but also how it is implemented in practice.
The core values of the NHS play a major role in many ethical scenarios that you may be asked in your interview (alongside the 4 pillars of ethics). We have a collection of guides dedicated to many different ethical topics that may come up, so be sure to check them out if you want to learn how you should approach these questions.
If you’re looking for support for your medicine interview preparation or general application preparation, our Interview Tutoring Bundles and Medicine Mastery Bundles are perfect for you, featuring a wide variety of resources and dedicated teaching time with medicine tutors. Best of luck with your interview preparation!
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