Portsmouth doctors give up their evening to help 40 local sixth-formers prepare for medical school interviews

Around 30 volunteer doctors interviewed Year 13 students (final year of Sixth Form) from five Portsmouth-area schools and colleges at a free mock interview evening run by the Dr Mike King Trust, the city charity set up in memory of a Portsmouth radiologist.

On Thursday 12 November, 40 Year 13 students applying to study Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary Medicine will sit a full mock interview at The Portsmouth Grammar School. Around 30 local doctors, dentists and senior clinicians are giving up their evening to interview them.

The students come from five schools and colleges: The Portsmouth Grammar School, Oaklands Catholic School, City of Portsmouth College, UTC Portsmouth and Havant & South Downs College. Every student at a partner school who has applied to these courses this year was offered a place, free of charge, whichever school they attend.

Medical schools now select students through a series of short, timed interviews, and the evening recreates that experience as closely as possible. Students rotate between interviewers, discuss their own personal statements, and work together on a group task. Every student gets honest feedback from practising doctors on the night, and can keep practising afterwards with materials from the Trust’s website.

The evening is a collaborative Portsmouth project: schools and colleges across the city working together, with The Portsmouth Grammar School as host. Results are never used to compare schools. The aim is simple: every young person from Portsmouth who wants to study medicine should get the same chance to prepare.

The Dr Mike King Trust was set up in memory of Dr Mike King, who grew up in Portsmouth and returned to work in the city as a consultant radiologist at Queen Alexandra Hospital. It was founded by his friend Dr Manish Patel, a Portsmouth consultant gastroenterologist. The two met at medical school in London. Both grew up in the city, went to schools that are now part of the programme, and chose to come home to work. Several of the evening’s volunteer doctors are former pupils of the partner schools too.

The mock interviews are the high point of the Trust’s Medical Pathways Programme, a free two-year programme for Year 12 and Year 13 students across Portsmouth, with talks on applying to medicine, a book club, events on GP and hospital careers, UCAT and personal statement support, and mentoring from medical students who came through the programme themselves. The full programme timetable starts in September 2027, with sessions already running this year.

Dr Manish Patel, founder of the Dr Mike King Trust, said: “Mike was a brilliant doctor who never forgot where he came from. Getting into medicine shouldn’t depend on which school you go to or who you know. These students have done the hard work. Our job is to make sure they walk into their real interviews having already been through one, with honest feedback from people who do the job every day. I am hugely grateful to the doctors who give up their evenings, and to the schools working together to make it happen.”

Students, parents and teachers can find out more and register at www.drmikekingtrust.co.uk.