Oxford Medical

Can you tell me how to prepare for all those daunting Consultant Interview Questions?
To help you prepare for your NHS consultant Interview we have provided below an extensive list of consultant interview questions. Remember to construct your responses based on a fact, opinion framework and if possible try and include one example from your clinical or non clinical experience to conclude your response. This way your response will be well structured, full of factual information and personal.
For more tips on answering any of these consultant interview questions feel free to subscribe to the consultant interview training package on this site or attend one of our weekly oxford or london consultant interview courses. Good Luck.

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General Consultant interview questions

General questions are initially used as an ice breaker during the consultant interview. They are not typically threatening in nature but are there to make you feel comfortable and to ease you into the interview process during the initial stages. These types of questions are extremely common but not too many consultant interview candidates excel in this area. You may look at the questions below and think "yes i can answer that question" but stop for a second and write down what you would actually say. What main 3 facts would you tell them about you. Why would you select those 3 points. Do these points make you unique or stand out from the croud? Have you got your unique selling points in your response?
There are lots of ways of telling people about you but there are great ways of telling poeple about you and how they have a great opportunity to appoint such a fantastic candidate for their job!
Remember, that whilst these are typical ice breaking questions the content that you deliver is still vitally important. Try practicing these questions at home or with consultant colleagues and get some feedback on how you answer the following:

1. Tell us about yourself?
2. Talk through your career so far?
3. What is your background?
4. What is the one achievement on your CV that you are most proud of?
5. Summarise your experience so far?
6. Do you have any changes to make to your CV?
7. How many jobs have you applied for previously?
8. Do you have any other job applications in at present?
9. Did you apply for this post last year?
10. Have you looked around the area?
11. Have you met any of these panel members?
12. What are your career plans?
13. Do you feel there any gaps in your CV?
14. How could you have improved your CV?
15. Why medicine?
16. What made you choose this speciality as a career?
17. Do you think it is important to gain experience of other specialities?
18. What sort of things did you gain from in your own experience outside the speciality?
19. What are your career goals?
20. Why should we give you this job?
21. Why do you want this job?
22. What makes you the best candidate for this job?
23. Where do you see yourself in 10 or 20 years' time?
24. What is your special interest in this department?
25. Why do you want to work in this deanery?
26. What can you bring to this hospital?
27. How are you going to raise the profile of this Trust?
28. What are your strengths?
29. What's your biggest weakness?
30. What makes you angry?
31. What do you think about this geographical area?
32. What do you do in your free time?
33. Tell us about a recent triumph
34. Tell me about your biggest failure
35. What are the qualities of a good doctor?
36. Have you ever been criticised?
37. How would your best friend describe you?
38. What three adjectives describe you best?
39. What sort of hospital would you rather work in and why?
40. How will your previous employer remember you?
41. Are you a professional? Why?
42. What feedback have you obtained from your patients about yourself?
43. What would you like your obituary to say?
44. How do you measure success?
45. Are you successful?
46. Would you like to get involved in management at some time?
47. What have you done that is different to other candidates here today?
48. What will be the biggest challenge in this post for you?
49. What are you hoping to gain from us?
50. How do you know you're making the best career move for you?
51. Will you be happy being an average trainee?
52. What are the qualities of a successful consultant?
53. What skills do you need to develop the most?
54. Which job have you enjoyed the most and why?

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Teaching and medical education consultant interview questions.

Free tips on medical education and the Univeristy Representative questioning.

On the AAC panel there is usually a university representative. This seems to be the case even for DGH's and for non teaching hospitals as the Trust always is interested in research activity and advancing the name of the trust. Each trust will also want to make sure that from an educational perspective that they have the best consultants on board so they can offer a high quality medical educational programme.
Generally the university representative will be there to explore 2 areas. Firstly educational aspects and secondly research/evidence based medicine. From our considerable experience most consultant interview candidates have a plethora of educational and training experience with little formal training. From a research perspective they will be looking for someone who has a clear grasp of evidence based medicine, can quote literature and critically appraise a paper and hopefully demonstrate experience in the research process. Try practicing some of the following questions. If you need help ask one of our tutors how to approach these questions and they will be more than happy to demonstrate a model answer:

1. Tell us about your teaching experience so far?
2. What methods of teaching do you use?
3. If you were asked to teach a group of six junior doctors on a particular subject how would you go about preparing for your teaching session?
4. How would you convince a colleague of the importance of teaching?
5. What is problem-based learning?
6. What are the advantages and disadvantages of problem-based learning?
7. Tell me about a case where you learnt something new
8. How do you assess competence in a trainee?
9. Should trainees be involved in teaching?
10. How could we improve your training?
11. How might we identify your training needs?
12. How do you keep your skills up-to-date?
13. How does your previous training make you suitable for this job?
14. Talk us through your training so far
15. Why did you do a Bachelor of Science degree?
16. Are there any deficiencies in your training?
17. How do we know you're a good teacher?
18. Have you any knowledge of formal education and teaching methods?
19. Who is responsible for management training?
20. What management courses have you been on?
21. Did you find your management course useful?
22. How will you improve the training of junior doctors?
23. Who pays for training?
24. What is SIFT?
25. How do we attract the best junior doctors in the current competitive climate of MMC?
26. Should doctors teach nurses?
27. What is the purpose of a college tutor?
28. How does this differ from an educational supervisor's role?
29. How do you teach?
30. Tell us about any teaching that you have done recently and the methods you used. How did the students feel?
31. Discuss any new teaching methods that you are aware of
32. What are the problems with assessing competency?
33. How do we currently assess competency?
34. What's the worst or best case that you have managed?
35. What do you think of competency-based training?
36. How do we as doctors improve our knowledge?
37. What is CPED?
38. What's the most useful course that you been on?
39. What is e-learning?
40. How do we assess behaviour?
41. What is appraisal?
42. Are there any changes currently planned for future appraisal methods?

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Medical politics: consultant interview questions

In the latest NHS Whiter Paper NHS Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS published on the 12th July 2010 there is a focus on consultants having more responsibility for running the NHS. The old top down management approach is to be replaced with a bottom up approach. This change effectively empowers consultants in the new system. NHS trusts and foundation trusts are aware that the leaders of tomorrow will be the consultants that it employs. As a result the managerial team on the AAC panel will be looking to untilise the consultant body in the future stategic development and delivery of its goals. Everyone knows that it is difficult to engage and empower those who don't want to be involved so the recruitment of these potential leaders for tomorrow really starts at your interview. The trust and managers are aware of this but are you? 
The aim for you is to sell yourself as one of these new politically savvy consultants, aware and up to date of recent changes, and ready to be engaged to help and facilitate the future goals and no doubt help overcome the difficulties that your trust will encounter in the future. Most consultant interview delegates just believe that knowledge on the main NHS topics is enough. Whilst this is ok for junior and registrar level interviews it is not enough for consultant interviews. What we as clinical managers are looking for is not just the knowledge but also a sensible opinion. Most of these questions are grey in nature. There will not be a correct answer for many of them but what is important is that you have your own opinion on the strenghts and weaknesses of each of the quango organisations. It is ok to disagree over opinion. It is what makes us all unique and we encounter this all the time during our NHS practice. The development of sensible opinions takes time and cannot be simply developed by reading a document or NHS report. It is best to sit and debate these topics with senior consultants so that you can see both sides for each discussion. Alternatively come on one of our consultant interview courses. This is what we work on during our workshops.
Have a practice using the following questions and see if you can firstly demostrate the core knowledge required for each of these topics and secondly develope a sensible opinion to share: 

1. Is clinical governance a good thing?
2. What do you think of NICE?
3. Have you had the last Healthcare Commission report for this Trust?
4. What is the Healthcare Commission for?
5. Can you tell me about any recent NHS white papers?
6. What is the purpose of ‘Payment by Results'?
7. What is the tariff and how is the tariff going to change in the years to come?
8. What changes have affected the GMC recently?
9. What you know about the Bristol heart scandal?
10. Do you know about the Alder Hey scandal?
11. What has been the outcome of the Shipman scandal?
12. Do you think that increased spending in the NHS has been used well?
13. What is the purpose of the Foundation status hospital?
14. Is there rationing of healthcare in the NHS?
15. What was the purpose of the reduction in junior doctors' training hours and how has this affected patient care?
16. What do you think of the new consultant contract?
17. What you think about private practice?
18. What you think about independent treatment centres?

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Clinical governance: Consultant interview questions

1. Can you tell me about clinical governance?
2. Has clinical governance improved patient safety?
3. How does clinical governance interact with your day-to-day patient care?
4. Is clinical governance justified?
5. Who is responsible for clinical governance in your Trust?
6. Can you tell me about clinical risk management?
7. How do you manage risk in your practice?
8. What happens to the different parts of the critical incident form once they have been submitted?
9. Tell me about a NICE guideline in your speciality
10. Please tell me about the National Patient Safety Agency
11. What is the Hospital at Night project?
12. What are your opinions on Modernizing Medical Careers?
13. What is the purpose of PMETB?
14. What do you know about Foundation programmes?
15. When were you last appraised?
16. What is the purpose of the appraisal process?
17. Is the appraisal process a total waste of time?
18. How do you prepare for your appraisal?
19. What do you understand by revalidation of an assessment?
20. Why do you think the public has lost trust with doctors?
21. What you think of the nurse consultant?
22. Do you agree with nurse prescribing?
23. In risk management is it really a blame-free culture?
24. Should we follow protocols?
25. Should we follow guidelines?
26. What's the difference between a protocol and a guideline?
27. What you think of managers?
28. What's wrong with having doctors as managers?
29. Why was NHS Direct formed?
30. How would you deliver a new service program?
31. How do you go about writing a business plan for a new service?
32. What problems are there with introducing change and how have you managed them previously?
33. Are you a leader?
34. What qualities are required in a leader?
35. What's the difference between leadership and management?
36. What's your leadership style?
37. What's your management style?
38. Give me an example of where you showed leadership skills
39. Give me an example of where you managed a clinical scenario well
40. Can you be a good manager but not a good leader?
41. Give me example of a leader who you admire and why
42. Explain how we deliver locally nationally agreed standards of care and give an example
43. What is practice-based commissioning?
44. What is the Private Finance Initiative?
45. What are the problems with a PFI project?
46. What is ‘MONITOR' and what do they do?
47. What are the award star ratings for Trusts?
48. What is Agenda for Change and does it affect doctors?
49. What is the purpose of the Modernisation Agency? Give an example
50. Have you read Good Medical Practice published by the GMC? What is it about?
51. What important points are there from this document?
52. What is the purpose of the National Clinical Assessment service?
53. What are GMC Affiliates?

Research and audit: Consultant interview questions

1. Have you performed any research?
2. Tell me about your research experience
3. What type of study did you use?
4. Where did you get your funding from?
5. Why is research important?
6. Tell me the steps that you went through whilst setting up your research project
7. Should all doctors perform research?
8. Do you see yourself performing research in this job?
9. Why bother doing research?
10. Tell me about a recent paper that you have read
11. Tell me about a recent paper which changed your clinical practice
12. Tell me about the advantages and disadvantages of evidence-based medicine
13. What is research governance?
14. How do you grade different levels of evidence?
15. Does evidence-based medicine apply to all specialities?
16. How does research differ from audit?
17. Tell me about an audit that you performed
18. What's the difference between an audit and a survey?
19. Describe an audit cycle
20. Is audit valuable?
21. Which is more important - audit or research?
22. What journals do you read?
23. Tell me about your last publication
24. What has been the most significant advance in your speciality recently?
25. What are your research interests?
26. What makes a good audit?
27. What changes did your audit result in?
28. How do we measure the outcome of an audit project?
29. Should everyone by performing audits?
30. Give me an example of an audit project in your hospital that changed clinical practice
31. What national audits are there and give an example?
32. What is a gold standard?
33. Who is responsible for setting the gold standards?

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Ethics and difficult scenarios: Consultant interview questions

1. If you came to work and felt that your consultant had been drinking how would you handle the situation?
2. What would you do if one of your colleagues turned up to work drunk?
3. A patient insults your colleague who then refuses to treat the patient.  What do you do?
4. The patient refuses to be treated by a colleague because he is foreign, what do you do?
5. Your consultant deliberately ignores a protocol.  How would you handle the situation?
6. You feel that your consultant does not provide training.  What would you do?
7. A colleague is constantly late for work. How do you handle the situation?
8. A colleague turns up to work and looks unwell.  What will you do?
9. Your consultant has frequently made inappropriate sexual remarks to you - how do you handle the situation?
10. Your consultant prescribes blood to a Jehovah's Witness who has previously refused a blood transfusion.  What should you do?
11. A junior colleague whilst changing has needle marks on his arm.  How do you proceed?
12. One of your colleagues has been seen taking envelopes and other stationery from the departmental Secretary's office. What will you do?

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Management and leadership: Consultant interview questions

1. Are you a good communicator?
2. How do you know?
3. Give examples where you used your communication skills to their full advantage
4. Have you ever failed to communicate properly?
5. What makes a good communicator?
6. Are you a team player?
7. What makes a good team player?
8. Do you work well as part of the team or do you prefer to work on your own?
9. Have you worked in a multi disciplinary team? Give me an example
10. What is leadership about?
11. Give an example of a leader in your previous Trust
12. What does leading mean to you?
13. Is every team a good team?
14. As a leader how would you motivate your team?
15. How would you motivate or manage an underperforming colleague?
16. A member of the team is not pulling their weight - how would you react?
17. Give me a situation where you showed good leadership skills
18. Give me an example where you used your initiative for the benefit of a patient
19. Have you ever got angry or lost your temper at work?
20. Have you had to manage a conflict with a colleague? Tell me about it
21. How did you go about managing the situation?
22. What methods are there for resolving conflicts?
23. How would you handle a poorly performing colleague?
24. Have you ever felt stressed at work?
25. How did you deal with that stress?
26. How do you know when you are stressed?
27. Have you ever made a very stressful decision in the clinical setting?
28. A member of the team is rude to you.  How would you handle it?
29. Have you ever had to manage resources?
30. Give an example of how you have to manage difficult resources clinically
31. If you're a clinical director of your speciality and were given £50,000 how would you spend it?
32. Have you ever received a complaint?
33. Have you ever made a complaint?
34. What do you know about the complaints procedure?

We would like to thank the hundreds of doctors who have sent us their consultant interview questions so that we can maintain the aboce list of questions and keep it up to date. There are too many of them to name individually however to give you an idea of what types of interviews they have come from we have listed the specialities of those who were asked a selcetion of these questions below:

1. cardiology
2. anaesthetics
3. breast surgery
4. urology
5. GUM/HIV
6. oncology
7. haematology
8. pathology
9. histopathology
10. paediatrics
11. trauma and orthopaedics
12. plastic surgery
13. dermatoloy
14. radiology
15. orthopaedics
16. psychiatry
17. gastroenterology
18. ent
19. obs and gynae (obstetrics and gynaecology)
20. pain medicine
21. ITU
22. general medicine including renal, respiratory
23. interventional cardiology
24. vascular surgery
25. opthalmology
26. accident and emergency/acute medicine 

You may also be interested in our:

Consultant Interview Guide: 169 pages of essential information for your consultant interview

Online Consultant interview training package: Find out about this comprehensive training package

Consultant CV Writing guide: Get your CV up to date to really fine tune your application

Small group Consultant Interview Courses: Oxford and London based. Considered the training best available

More Consultant Interview tips: Other useful information about the consultant interview process.