Viva Questions for Medicine

Medical research vivas focus on clinical relevance, ethical rigour, and the translational potential of your findings. Examiners will probe your understanding of study design – particularly randomisation, blinding, and bias – and expect you to articulate how your research could influence clinical practice, guidelines, or patient outcomes. Whether your work is clinical, epidemiological, or laboratory-based, you'll need to demonstrate that your findings are both scientifically sound and clinically meaningful.

Medicine is one of the few disciplines where your examiners may ask you directly: should this change what we do for patients? That question underpins the entire viva. Even if your research is basic science or early-stage, examiners will want to see that you understand the translational pipeline and can articulate where your work sits within it. If your research is clinical, the expectations around study design and patient safety are especially rigorous.

Questions about your research

Medical research vivas are thorough on methodology because the stakes of getting it wrong are high. Examiners will probe your study design, your approach to bias and confounding, and whether your outcome measures are clinically meaningful – not just statistically convenient. If you've worked with patients, expect questions about consent, ethics committee interactions, and how you balanced research rigour with clinical care.

• What clinical or scientific question does your research address, and why does it matter for patients or the health system?
• How did you design your study, and what specific steps did you take to minimise bias?
• How did you recruit your participants – what were the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and how did they affect the generalisability of your sample?
• What steps did you take to ensure blinding or allocation concealment, if applicable?
• How did you obtain ethical approval, and were there any ethical challenges that arose during the research?
• Can you walk us through your primary and secondary outcome measures and explain why you chose them?
• How did you handle missing data, loss to follow-up, or protocol deviations?
• What statistical methods did you use, and how did you determine your sample size?
• How did you ensure patient safety throughout the study, and what stopping rules were in place?
• Were there any unexpected adverse events, and how did you manage and report them?
• How did you handle the regulatory requirements of your research – MHRA, HRA, or equivalent?
• What role did patient and public involvement play in your research design?

Questions about theory and literature

Medical examiners will expect you to know the evidence base in your area thoroughly – not just the studies that support your hypothesis, but those that challenge it. They'll want to see that you can critically appraise the existing literature and explain exactly where your work fits within it. If relevant systematic reviews or meta-analyses exist, you should know them well.

• How does your research sit within the current evidence base for this condition or intervention?
• What systematic reviews or meta-analyses are relevant to your work, and how does your study compare?
• How does your study design improve on or differ from previous trials or studies in this area?
• Are there conflicting findings in the literature, and how does your work help to resolve them?
• What clinical guidelines currently exist in this area, and how might your findings affect them?
• How has the clinical or scientific landscape changed during the course of your research?
• How does your work engage with the broader debate about evidence hierarchies in medicine?

Questions about contribution and impact

In medicine, contribution is ultimately measured by the potential to improve patient outcomes, inform clinical decision-making, or shape health policy. Examiners will want to know not just what you found, but what should happen next. Be prepared to discuss what further research is needed, what a definitive trial would look like, and whether your findings are ready to influence practice or need further validation.

• What is your thesis's principal contribution to medical knowledge or clinical practice?
• How could your findings change what clinicians do – and how confident are you in making that recommendation?
• What are the implications for patients, healthcare providers, or health systems?
• Would you recommend changes to current guidelines based on your results, and if so, what caveats would you attach?
• What further research is needed before your findings could be safely implemented in clinical practice?
• How does your work contribute to reducing health inequalities or improving access to care?

Tough follow-ups your examiners might ask

Medical examiners will challenge the robustness and generalisability of your conclusions. They'll push on sample size, potential biases, and whether your results are clinically meaningful as well as statistically significant. They may also ask you to consider what a negative result would have meant – a sign that you're thinking like a scientist, not just an advocate for your own hypothesis.

• Your sample size is modest – how confident are you that these results would hold in a larger, more diverse population?
• How would you respond to a clinician who says these findings wouldn't change their practice?
• Could selection bias, information bias, or confounding explain your positive result?
• What would a negative result have told us, and would it have been equally worth publishing?
• If you were designing a definitive Phase III trial or multicentre study based on your findings, what would it look like?
• How do you weigh the statistical significance of your results against their clinical significance?
• What are the cost-effectiveness implications of implementing your findings?

Ready to practise? These are the kinds of questions your examiners will ask – but in a real viva, they won't stop at the first answer. They'll follow up, probe deeper, and test how well you can think on your feet. Try VivaCoach to practise with AI-powered follow-up questions tailored to your thesis.

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