Doctors Without Personality Disorders

Monday, 11 July 2011 | by Pat's Picks

There’s a new prerequisite for working in health care these days: good people skills. The New York Times says medical schools are realizing that it’s not optional. More and more are implementing screening that will make it more difficult for a student to get in if he or she isn’t going to be a person that will get along with other hospital staff and patients. The new application process has a name: the multiple mini interview, or M.M.I. Basically, it’s a little like speed dating—potential candidates sit down for eight to ten short interviews with different members of an admissions team to determine whether they have to chops to communicate with a variety of people. The system stems from research that found interviewers rarely change their scores after the first five minutes of an interview, the idea being that multiple interviews would remove any bias.