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Welcome to Ace Your NHS Consultant Interview - the podcast for doctors who want to take the stress and guesswork out of their NHS consultant interview prep.
We know how overwhelming it can feel to prep for your consultant interviews when you’re already stretched thin.
Each episode, we’ll break down what actually works - no fluff, no endless reading, just practical steps you can fit into a hectic week. You’ll hear honest advice, real stories, and the frameworks we use with our own students inside the Academy to help you show up confident, prepped, and ready to secure the job you want.
If you’re a final year trainee or locum consultant and you want to prepare, not panic, you’re in the right place.
Hello and welcome to the Ace Your Consultant Interview Podcast. I'm Tessa Davis. And I'm Becky Platt.
And if you're a final year trainee or a low-income consultant and you want to prep, not panic, then you're in the right place. Welcome back to our Asia Consultant Interview Podcast. Becky and I are going to be chatting through some common interview questions and queries that come up to help you prep for your NHS substantive consultant interviews.
This is based on all of the experience we've had of coaching over 1,000 students through the academy. And we're going to share some of their questions and some of the examples that come up. So we're going to look at our question of the week from a student firstly.
So what have we got this week? So our question of the week this week was, what metrics should I know about? So metrics and KPIs, key performance indicators, I think the term is interchangeable. Is there a difference between these two terms, do you think? I guess often there will be a set of kind of formal KPIs for certain departments. But I honestly think for the purposes of your interview, you can use these terms interchangeably.
I don't think, and if they ask whichever phrase they use, it's essentially the same thing. It's looking at a marker of how you measure success. And that will be success of delivering quality care to your patients.
And quality will be in different things. It will be how efficient it is, how safe it is. As they say, it's like all the CQC pillars, safe, effective, well-led, and so on.
So I think initially when students are prepping, this is quite a scary question. Because as a reg, as a trainee, I don't know that you need to think about metrics that much. But in reality, you are thinking about metrics when you're in training.
You just maybe don't know them as being metrics. Do you think that's fair to say? Yeah, I think that's probably true. I think it's probably more obvious in some specialities than in others, and in some parts of your job.
So I guess, look, if you work in ED, you know that we're supposed to be working to a four-hour target. Whether we achieve that many days is a whole different matter. And there are other metrics around ambulance handover times, times to get patients to the ward.
In specialities that have an outpatient presence, you might be thinking about 18-week pathways. And you might think about two-week cancer weights. So you probably are working towards those metrics.
But they might not have been an explicit part of your role in your training as much as they will be when you're in a consultant post. Yeah. And also, if you think about audits that people do that anyone's done during their training, they probably were for a metric, even though you didn't think about it.
So if you're auditing, even like, say, writing a discharge summary, and you audit what the status of the discharge summary is, there will be a target that discharge summaries need to contain, whatever, five things or 10 things. And that's essentially what you're auditing against. What is best practise? And best practise is usually something measurable, and that's what the metric is.
So some things are easier to measure than others. So I think for interview purposes, I think it's quite measuring patient satisfaction or staff well-being is quite a difficult thing to measure. There are metrics, but actually easier things are the things that you mentioned.
What's your wait time to get to clinic? What's your wait time for letters to go out or for you to review a patient or to wait time for a theatre slot? Or how many patients you get through a theatre list in a day? You know, these are common metrics that people use day to day. And often, once you start thinking about these metrics and you realise what they are, you'll suddenly realise loads because it will just become really obvious what you're doing. What do you think? I think just thinking about where people can look.
So if they're not sure and they can't think of what a metric would be, how are they housed? What's the best way to find them, do you think, or start to think about them? I think the easiest thing to do to start with is to ask, you know, one of our consultants or clinical leads in your department often ask one of the senior nurses, say one of your band seven nurses or matrons. They will have a great handle on the metrics for your department and the service managers as well. You could have a look in the CQC report.
You could also look on things like the GIRFT reports for your area, getting it right first time. Those are great sources of metrics. Colleges as well, I think.
Colleges sometimes have, depending on your college, will have some standards that you're supposed to achieve. Maybe societies like national groups might set standards for your speciality. But yeah, you're right.
The easiest thing if you really can't think of it is to just talk to one of your colleagues because I think once it collects what they are, you'll find it a lot easier to think of them. Yeah. And you may have done, as you say, you may have done an audit on it.
So, you know, people have done some really nice audits on things like post-op nausea and vomiting and how that relates to length of stay. That's a really nice one because actually it's measurable in terms of number, but also it's a really nice kind of patient experience metric as well. And I know the patient experience stuff is more difficult to manage, but I always think it comes across really well if people can put some sort of patient feedback and experience in.
Because I think it just demonstrates to the panel that you are somebody that keeps the patient at the centre of your practise and I think that that matters. This is true. Yeah.
Good. Okay. I think that's hopefully answered that question.
Now, we're going to look at an example that someone's given us in the academy and talk about whether it's a good example or a bad example. The one we've got this week is an example of a time you made a mistake. Last week, we talked about a good example.
So, it was where the lids were swapped on a blood sample bottle. So, what have we got this week? Okay. This week, we've got an example of giving the wrong dose of medication to a patient, but let me elaborate on this.
So, the example is when I was junior, on my first day, I was asked to administer some IV morphine to a patient after an MI. I was given this syringe by the nurse and I pushed the contents of the syringe into the patient. A couple of minutes later, the nurse said to me, where's the rest of the syringe so that I can discard the other four mils? Gulp.
So, it transpired that I had given five mils instead of one mil of morphine. Is this a good example of a mistake? Okay. So, there's a lot in this example.
So, the first thing is that it's a true example. So, these things do happen, unfortunately. So, your example has to be honest, but there is a difference between honesty and being able to choose and having some control because it is your interview.
So, you do get to choose. You don't have to pick the worst thing that you've done to share in your interview. You can actually choose.
It's your interview. You want to showcase yourself in a good light. So, just because something happened doesn't mean that it needs to be shared.
I think there's a few things about this example that would make me not think it's a good one to use. What jumps out at you, Becky? I think there's a few things. I think, number one, if you're thinking about a medication error, I would steer clear of controlled drugs.
And I think, ideally, we don't want to be throwing ourselves under the bus and talking about making an error with CDs. And I think also, if you can avoid IV medication errors, that's probably a good idea as well. I just think this is a really good example of why you have to prep this answer, isn't it? Because actually, if somebody asked you, tell me about the time you made a mistake, you're probably still feeling quite cringey about this.
And so, it's the first thing in your mind when somebody says it. But actually, there will be much smaller mistakes that you've made that will still allow you to demonstrate that you can reflect and learn without holding your hands up to something that involves a controlled drug. Yeah.
And I think there's also a couple of things in here around taking ownership of the mistake. So, one of the things that's really important is, when you tell the story, you can then say, I realised I'd made a mistake. Now, I know in the end here, it was your mistake, clearly, because you've pushed the drug.
But there's a few things that are being dropped in the mistake that makes you kind of say, indicating to the panel, this wasn't really my fault. And actually, I think, did you say it was their first day or something, was the first thing? It was their first day and they were handed the syringe by us. So, it being their first day is a bit of like, no one, you know, I didn't know where things were.
It wasn't really my fault. And being handed it by the nurse is even more blatantly saying, this wasn't my fault. This was the nurse's fault.
They gave me the syringe. They should have been clear, which, you know, may be true. But the goal of this is to share a bit of vulnerability from your point of view at, you know, be able to say it was me.
And not just it was me and the buck stops with me because I'm the overall responsible person, but it was really someone else's fault. But actually, this was my mistake. And in the end, this was your mistake because you should have checked what you were giving before you gave it.
So, you could take ownership of it if you expressed it in a different way. But for the reasons you mentioned, Becky, I don't think you want to take ownership of this in your consultant interview because it's quite a big deal giving, you know, five times dose of controlled drug because you didn't check it properly. Yeah.
So, I think we might avoid that one. Stick with something more simple. Yeah.
Which is exactly why, like you say, it's better to think through these in advance because coming up with these examples is normal. But what you want to do is be able to say, okay, that's not for this interview. So, let's keep thinking.
Let's think of something else and let's think more of it every day. Yeah. Good.
But this is a common, I think this is a common thing that people would think of to say related to a common way people express their mistakes. So, yeah, you don't need to use this in your interview. Okay.
So, we're good. Next up, we're going to look at an interview question you might be asked and how we're going to break it down. So, what question have we got for today? So, the question we've got today is, what do you think are the challenges in leading change and how would you handle those? So, yeah.
How would you break that down? Well, firstly, fairly common question, I would say. So, change, leadership, all of the senior level elements of the consultant interview are thinking about how you improve service delivery, how you look on making change and what's difficult about that. So, I think it's a pretty common question and it's probably a good opportunity to talk about change and the challenges of change, but using a specific example of something that you've done.
So, you know, like you would pick themes of change, but say, and I showed this when I was doing an audit, when I was doing this QI project, how we overcome that challenge was X, Y, and Z. So, common challenges of making change are, I think, maybe getting everyone on board with the change, probably logistics around how to practically implement stuff because there's things and that might include funding, but it might include space or some logistics around making the change. Deadlines, probably, timing, making sure that things get done to a timeframe and definitely sustainability. So, particularly when you're in training and you're rotating around every six months, you start projects and then you leave.
And then, so how do you make sure that project is sustainable? So, I think these are the common themes. Have I missed it? Are there other things that you can think of? I suppose probably something about how you embed it and create some sort of sustainable change. So, it's, yeah, how can you make sure that even when you're off, not just that there'll be someone else leading it, but that it will still keep going for the years beyond.
And these are common, I think, to most change projects, most projects that you've done around service, thinking about how the service is delivered. So, it's not, they're not uncommon themes. But how, what you want to do is rather than just saying, the challenge of change is it being sustainable so that it doesn't just stop when I leave.
But actually to then go, and the way I did this with my audit project on X was that I ensured I had a handover process. There was an SOP, there were champions within the team to do it. And actually, I know that it's now two years later and even though I'm not there, this is still ongoing.
And so, that takes it from just understanding a challenge of change to showing that you have experience of doing that and showing specifics about how you manage to make that happen. Yeah, and I think if you can mention kind of key words around implementing change and things like stakeholder management or stakeholder engagement. So, you might say one of the particular challenges around managing change is getting all of the key stakeholders involved.
When I was implementing my new guideline on X, I spent some time at the beginning working out who were all of the people that were going to be affected across the whole patient pathway by this new guideline. And I made contact with each one of those to make sure that all of the right stakeholders were involved and involved in writing the guideline so that it would be agreed and practicable by everyone that needed to be involved. Yeah, and stakeholders, yeah, I think people can find the word stakeholder is a bit confusing because it's quite sort of corporate words that we don't, we might not be used to.
So, it's like you say, it's anyone who has an interest really in the project. So, it could be other teams that are involved, other disciplines, potentially patients, depending on what kind of project it is. And so, it's everyone within the hospital team or your team and that will be impacted at all could be considered as a stakeholder.
Yeah, exactly. Anyone that's going to be affected. So, if I implement a new guideline on how quickly we're going to get patients to the ward from ED, but I don't tell the wards about this, that's going to be a bit of a problem.
And so, they're a key stakeholder in this. So, yeah, thinking about all of the people that are affected. Yeah, and this is often a good, I think, source of thinking about the challenges of dealing with conflict.
So, you're trying to implement something and the other team don't like it. You're an ED trying to implement a change and the speciality team, that change doesn't work for them. So, part of your senior level skills is working out how to get on well with them and implement a system that actually works for everyone.
It's not just good for your team, but it works for all the teams that are involved. And so, this is a really important thing to draw out. You could, if you're asked about how to advocate for change or how to manage resistance to change, these themes can also come out there.
So, I think it's quite a common thread that can go through interviews. And it's a good reason why you should think through the projects that you've done in a bit more depth before the interview. So, actually think about what were the challenges of each project and what was difficult about embedding it, because you will be able to use them in different ways as well, I think.
Cool. So, what have we got last up? We're doing our tips and tricks. So, we're into the tips and tricks section.
So, this is a subject that I know you're passionate about. And what are your tips and tricks around the pre-interview meeting? Yep. So, I do think a pre-interview meeting can play a really important role in your ability to get the job.
So, although it seems like it's not the interview and you are being scored on the interview, there is a lot of work that you can do before you even get in the interview room door that I think makes a massive difference. And I know we talked last week about how to approach contacting these people. But then when they say they want to meet and you go and meet them and make it happen, I think you need to make that worthwhile and know why you're going.
And your initial feeling is you want to make a good impression and you want them to really like you so that they give you the job. And that is true. You do want to make a good impression.
But I think the gold in the pre-interview meeting is, yes, it's building a connection and meeting with them. But actually, it's the stuff that they tell you. And how many times have we seen people get amazing gold from their pre-interview meetings? I mean, it happens all the time.
All the time. All the time. I mean, this is the stuff that's uppermost in the mind of the clinical lead or the medical director or whoever else it is.
Whatever call they've just come off, they're thinking about that when they meet you. And they're likely to tell you, oh yeah, I was just chatting to somebody about implementing a new change across the theatre pathway. Now you know about that and you can chat about it in your interview if it comes up.
Yeah, so I think it's two elements. You can chat about it in your interview and they're likely to ask you about it in your interview. Because when you think about the panel are going to sit together and plan what questions they're going to ask, the questions are going to be relevant.
They're not going to pick something that's relevant to another distant hospital or service. They want to ask you about things that are relevant to their service. And these are the things exactly like that, that are the top of their mind.
And that's what you will get from actually being open to the conversation with them in the pre-interview meeting. So rather than going in armed with 20 questions, what do you think about this? What would you say about that? What would you say about that? That's your agenda. It's much better to be open to their agenda.
So let's see what they want to talk about. Now it can be variable because you don't know how the pre-interview meetings are going to go. Sometimes they'll fire questions at you.
Sometimes they'll say, okay, you've got me for 20 minutes. What do you want to ask? And there's no way to really know that. It tends to be more of a conversation that is not as stressful as you think it might be because they've done it lots of times before and they often take the lead.
But you should definitely go ready with some questions. And my advice is to keep the questions as open as possible. What are the biggest priorities for you and the service going forward? What have been your biggest challenges in the last year? And if you do that, and then importantly listen to what they say, have the conversation from that through that line.
So whatever they answer back is not like great question done onto question three. But actually you talk to them about it. Okay, so that's interesting.
And what have you done? What's been done to address that? Or what are you hoping will be done to address that? And that's where the gold is in that conversation because what they tell you is really important to remember. You can actually reflect that back to them essentially in the interview. I think the other thing that's useful to think about when you're meeting with people pre-interview is that if you've been asked to do a presentation as part of your interview, that's likely to be on something that's the current priority, the department.
So if you've been asked about your vision for their service, then actually they are likely to share kind of some of the stuff that they've got planned or that they're hoping will come into action in terms of their service. So actually it's fine to share your vision, but I think you should also make sure that it aligns with their vision. And that's likely to come out at that pre-interview meeting as well.
So it's a source of potential gold for your interview. So sometimes they can give you, essentially just tell you what is gonna be asked in the interview, I think. Sometimes they'll just say, we're gonna ask you a question about a QI project.
So make sure you know about that. Or we're definitely gonna ask you about staff retention, cause that's been an issue. And it's really important to just pay attention to that.
That's obvious when they say it that way, it's obvious. But if you didn't go for these interviews, you wouldn't know. And we had an example recently where a student, there was someone from another speciality who was going to be on the substantive panel because they were representing their service on that panel as an extra person on the panel.
And they told them during the pre-interview meetings to read the CQC report from their speciality. So a different speciality from what the person was being interviewed for. And there's no way you would have read another speciality CQC or not in any depth, unless they'd been told that.
But they got told it in the pre-interview visit and then they got asked the question directly about it. Have you read the CQC report for this speciality? And what did you think about it? And in reality, if they hadn't gone to that pre-interview meeting, they would not have had a clue. And that question would have massively stressed them out.
So this is why it's so important to go. But it's also important to listen. And that's when they obviously tell you what the questions are, but often I think it's more subtle.
So they might steer the conversation around topics that might come up. One other thing is that once you've had that pre-interview meeting, come out, write down what they said to you so that you can, well, it's fresh in your mind. And then I would brainstorm.
We like to do this with students. We brainstorm questions that might come up around that topic. If they're telling you that recruitment's an issue, so what questions might they ask you about recruitment? How would you improve recruitment? What do you think the challenges are with retaining staff? Then have a think and prepare for questions around that because it will be less surprising and they've given you a really clear heads up.
So yeah, massive, I think massive amounts of gold to be in from these pre-interview meetings if you do them well. Yeah. So in summary, go to the pre-interview meeting.
Go and see them. It's busy and it's stressful because it's like you're trying to prep for your interview, but what you need to remember is this is prep for your interview. And in some ways, it's one of the most important parts of prep.
So make it happen. Next week, we're going to be looking at some other areas, including when you're asked about duty of candour and how to choose a good example for a time that you did duty of candour. So we will see you next week.
Can't wait. Bye.