Admissions preparation
Preparing for interviews
AAMC
Official guidance for communicating experiences and preparing for medical school interviews. Authentic reflection matters alongside academic preparation.
Review interview guidance
All resources
Doctoring & interviews
Bring your whole self to care
Understand communication, standardized patients and the clinical skills you will practice in medical school.
Your next three steps
- 01
Practice listening without interrupting and summarizing another person’s perspective.
- 02
Discuss real experiences and what you learned instead of memorizing interview scripts.
- 03
In ethical scenarios, acknowledge uncertainty, autonomy, safety and the need for supervision.
What doctoring can look like
A safe place to practice
Trained standardized patients portray clinical scenarios. You can practice a history, explain a plan and receive feedback before and alongside supervised clinical care.
Skills, not scripts
Doctoring courses often combine communication, examination, reasoning and professionalism. Genuine listening matters more than polished jargon.
Feedback you can use
An OSCE is a structured series of clinical stations. Depending on the school, faculty and standardized patients may assess skills; encounters may be recorded with appropriate consent.
See the full doctoring course, standardized patients and an OSCE station, minute by minute
Clinical learning
Standardized patients
Association of Standardized Patient Educators
Learn about people trained to portray patient cases and support clinical education. Encounters can develop interviewing, examination and communication skills.
Learn about simulation