Consultant

► Why have you applied to this particular trust?

► What qualities can you bring to this post?

► You mentioned that you are a good team player. What does that mean? And what are your main weaknesses?

► What do patients think of you?

► What do you do to de-stress?

► Tell what you understand by appraisal.

► What is the difference between assessment and appraisal?

► How would you react to your Royal College advocating objective assessments as part of revalidation?

► A recent audit in the department shows that you are not performing as well as the other consultants. How do you react to this?

► Your clinical director feels that the 10 hours of SPA time in your job plan are rather generous and would like you to do another 4 hours of direct clinical care. What would you do?

► Tell me about your radiology experience as a consultant.

► What do you think of open access to GPs for musculoskeletal ultrasound?

► What about radiographers doing musculoskeletal ultrasound?

► Talk me through your experience of musculoskeletal interventional procedures.

► Can you perform MR arthrograms competently?

► What is your opinion on open access to GPs for MRI? What do you think are the issues associated with this?

► What is your experience of CT colonography?

► What is your experience of cardiac CT.

► Tell me more about your most recent poster.

► What experience do you have of 3.0 Tesla MR imaging. Do you think there is a role for a 3.0 T MRI scanner in a DGH?

► Would you be happy to perform drainage of a deep pelvic abscess or a lung biopsy?

► You are on call and an FY1 has contacted you asking for an urgent MRI of the lumbar spine for cauda equine syndrome. What do you do next?

► What are the child protection issues in radiology?

► What is your experience of head and neck radiology?

► How would you describe your communication skills?

► What makes you a good communicator?

► What is more important: good communication or good clinical skills?

► Give an example of a situation where you failed to communicate appropriately.

► Give an example of a non-clinical situation where your communication skills made a difference to the outcome of a project.

► How can you show empathy through an interpreter?

► What makes you a good team player?

► Give an example of a situation where you made a difference to a team.

► Give an example of a dysfunctional team in which you worked. How did you deal with it and what did you learn from that experience?

► Tell us about your management experience.

► What is the difference between management & leadership?

► Can you learn management by going to management courses?

► Do doctors need management skills?

► What does leadership mean to you and when do you exercise it?

► What makes you a good leader?

► Give an example of a situation where you showed leadership.

► Are leaders born leaders or can you learn to become a leader?

► What type of leader are you?

► Are you a leader or a follower?

► What makes a good team?

► How do you deal with stress?

► Give an example of a situation where you showed initiative.

► If you get this post, what ideas would you like to develop?

► How do you implement change in a unit?

► How do you go about fighting resistance from others when you want to change something? Give an example.

► As a consultant, how will you make sure that your team is up to scratch?

► In what circumstances have you had to influence others and how did you achieve your objectives?

► How possible is it to motivate and develop junior doctors in the current climate?

► How will you make sure that your team is up to scratch?

► How do you motivate others?

► How would your boss motivate you?

► How do you go about resolving a conflict?

► When is the last time you argued with a colleague?

► Tell us about a conflict which you had with a colleague?

► Tell us about a time when you had to deal with a conflict within your team or an MDT?

► What skills have you got which make you a good consultant?

► Would you be happy being an average consultant?

► What skills do you feel you need to improve the most?

► What are your strengths?

► What is your main weakness?

► How would your colleagues describe you?

► How would your patients describe you?

► How do you know that your colleagues trust you?

► How do you respond to criticism?

► Talk me briefly through your CV.

► The Chief Executive has decided to give you a year off before your start your post. How would you spend that year, and how would that benefit the Trust?

► What do you think wil be the major changes within intensive care medicine during the next 5 years?

► The ICU in this trust is going to change considerably over the next 5 years. How can you assist in this process?

► How do you know that you get on well with people? How would you know if you were failing?

► What do you think is the role of the consultant in postgraduate medical education?

► What do you think is the role of the consultant in teaching outside of ICU?

► Sometimes in the ICU there is a difference of opinion between the parent medical or surgical team and the ICU team about the appropriate management of the patient, in particular with regards to end of life decisions. How would you go about managing such disputes?

► The post that you have applied for is essentially 2 jobs (ICU and anaesthetics). This can cause problems between the two departments with conflicts of loyalty. What do you think about this and how will you manage it?

► Tell me about your hobbies and how they are useful to this job.

► What do you think the contribution of the new consultant post will be to medical student education.

► What do you think of the role of the new consultant in clinical research?

► A report in the Annals of Medicine states that patients managed by intensivists have a worse outcome than those managed by non-intensivists. Would you like to comment?

► What is your greatest weakness?

► Is there anything that you are not telling us and that you think I, as the Chief Executive, ought to know? Why should I not give you the job?

► Tell us about yourself

► Take us through your CV

► Why do you want to join this Trust?

► What can you offer to this Trust?

► What can this Trust offer you?

► How does your training meet the needs of the post?

► What makes you think that you are fit to become a consultant?

► How do you know that you are fit to become a consultant?

► How did you acquire the maturity to become a consultant?

► Do you feel that it is right for trainees to become consultants straight after CCT?

► What are the advantages and disadvantages of employing locum consultants?

► Where do you see yourself in 5/10/20 years' time?

► How do you see your career develop over the next 10 years?

► Would you like to become a clinical director?

► Looking back at your training, what did you like the most and the least?

► If you had the chance, what would you change in your training/ portfolio?

► What experience do you have to manage <type of session> successfully?

► Why should we give you this job?

► Is there anything which I, as the Chief Executive, should know and that you are not telling me? Why should I not give you the job?

► What was your greatest professional challenge in the past 5 years?

► What are the medium term goals for this hospital and how could help?

► What do you like the most and the least about this specialty?

► How do you identify your weaknesses?

► What is the difference between being a senior SpR and a junior consultant?

► How would your seniors motivate you?

► What do you think will be your biggest challenge in this post?

► What experiences outside of medicine have you found useful for your medical career?

► As a new consultant, what use will you make of your SPAs?

► Do you think that consultants should be entitled to SPAs?

► How do you measure success?

► Tell us about how your experience abroad constrasts with your UK experience.

► Looking back at your training abroad and in the UK, what would you have done differently?

► What areas do you feel would have made your UK training more complete?

► Are you aware of anything which was written in the past 6 months on the issue of content?

► What risks are surgical patients exposed to?

► You are in theatre drawing up your drugs for your first case, with the patient in the anaesthetic room. A fellow consultant anaesthetist comes in to say that he is not comfortable anaesthetising the first patient on his list. What would you do?

► You have a novice SHO who knows nothing about epidural with you. How would you go about teaching him about epidural?

► When you think the SHO is ready to do his first epidural, would you tell the patient that it is the SHO's first epidural?

► Why should we recruit you as a consultant rather than employ someone else at staff grade level?

► You have applied for the obstetric anaesthetic post. If we offered you a generalist job instead, would you take it?

► In a University hospital, what is more important: teaching or research?

► What are your views about appraisals for consultants? How should it be done? Who should be in charge?

► Will you be applying for an employer-based merit award?

► What is the worst peri-operative outcome? Should it be included as a discussion point during appraisal?

► If all doctors were asked to comment on the appraisal process, what do you think the majority would say?

► If we offered you the job, would you accept it?

► Why do really REALLY want to work for us?

► Tell us about your teaching experience.

► How do you cope with teaching multidisciplinary groups?

► Tell us about Problem-Based Learning? What are its pros and cons?

► What kind of teaching do you like/dislike the most?

► Tell us about your worst teaching experience as a teacher.

► What have you learnt from the teaching courses you attended?

► Do you think that anyone can be taught?

► How would you enthuse a junior doctor who had shown an interest into your specialty to join the specialty as a career?

► If I gave you a group of 6 FY2s/ST1s to teach next week for one hour on <topic>, how would you go about preparing for it?

► What makes you a good teacher?

► How do you know that youare a good teacher?

► What is the difference between a good teacher and an excellent teacher?

► How can we maintain good teaching in view of the decreased number of hours imposed by the European Working Time Directive?

► Other than by attending courses, how would you improve your teaching skills?

► Tell us about some of the negative feedback that you have received following your teaching sessions.

► How would you explain to an uneducated patient what <condition> is?

☛ Tell me about your obstetric anaesthesia training.

☛ Are there any deficiencies in your training?

☛ What problems do you anticipate as a consultant?

☛ Is our present system of cross-site cover ideal? What possible changes could be made?

☛ What are your views about nurse epiduralists?

☛ What are the unanswered questions in obstetric anaesthesia?

☛ How wouldyou obtain funding for research projects?

☛ Do you think that having undergraduates rotating through anaesthesia is a waste of time?

☛ How do you cope with teaching multidisciplinary groups?

☛ How can we ensure that you are performing to the standards of Good Medical Practice?

☛ What are clnical performance indicators?

☛ Tell me about your management skills.

☛ Are you a good leader? Why?

► What makes you think that you are safe?

► How do you know that you are safe ?

► How can we make sure that you are performing to the standards of Good Medical Practice?

► Tell us about your day-to-day experience of clinical governance.

► What contribution can you make to clinical governance in your new consultant post?

► How do you keep up to date?

► How do you identify your weaknesses and deficiencies?

► What contribution can you make to risk management?

► Do you believe in a no-blame culture?

► When did you last have to complete a critical incident form?

► How would you encourage your team to complete critical incident forms each time it is appropriate?

► What are the hurdles to implementing clinical governance in a department?

► Tell us about a recent clinical mistake that you have made.

► Tell us about your biggest mistake.

► Tell us about a situation where you felt out of your depth.

► When is the last time that you had to seek senior help?

► Do you think that it is acceptable for consultants to ask for help?

► Tell us about your audit experience.

► How does patient feedback influence your practice?

► How responsive are you to your patients' needs?

► Tell us about the most difficult clinical situation you have faced.

☛ Can you summarise how your interests will benefit the job plan that you have applied for?

☛ Can you summarise your research experience?

☛ Can you tell us about your teaching experience?

☛ What does an "organisation with a memory" mean to you and how do you think it applies to this Trust?

☛ Do you believe in evidence-based practice?

☛ What do you think about being told to change your practice when there is no evidence for the change?

☛ How does working in a team help with our jobs?

☛ What is the role of the anaesthetic consultant as a leader?

☛ Have you been involved in changing practice where you have worked? Tell us what steps you need to follow and what the outcome was.

☛ Have you anything you have regretted in your career?

☛ Have you been involved in conflict? Can you talk us through how you resolved this?

► Give an example of a situation when you enhanced the efficiency of your department.

► How would you develop better links with other departments? or Primary Care?

► How will this specialty be affected by current NHS changes?

► How do you feel that the Trust should react to current changes in the NHS?

► Should we be worried about polyclinics?

► How can we make this specialty more community centred?

► What do you think about giving patients the choice?

► Do you think it is fair to link the PBR tariff to quality of service? How do you think that quality should be measured?

► How do you think that the Darzi report influences the future of this specialty?

► How can we best present data on quality to patients?

► Darzi's proposed approach is to link quality payments to patient feedback. What are the pros and cons of this?

► What would be the effect of having a clinical dashboard in the waiting room?

► How can patient feedback be measured in a meaningful way?

► Do you think that encouraging competition through patient choice is the best way to achieve good quality of care?

► How can we optimise the efficiency of our department?

► If the tariff for procedure X is £1000 and, after full optimisation, the best we can do is an actual cost of £1,050, what should we do about it?

► What is your opinion on the new revalidation proposal of relicensing + recertification?

► What do you think would be the best way to assess if a doctor is safe?

► How do you assess surgical competence in a trainee?

► Do you think that appraisals are useful or just a paperwork exercise?

► What do you think are the issues caused by the introduction of revalidation as proposed?

► How possible is it to maintain good teaching and training in the context of the EWTD?

► Do you think the increasing role of nurses / the introduction of physicians' assistants is a solution to the NHS's problems?

► The Tooke report talks about destigmatising staff grade. What did he mean by that and what role can you play in achieving this?

► Both Tooke and Darzi talk about doctors needing more management and leadership skills. What is wrong with the status quo? What role can you play in helping juniors gain more experience in both?

► What is the best way to assess if someone is fit to enter this specialty at ST1/ST3 level?

► Our aim is to develop a new service on xxx. How do you think we can about doing this? What hurdles do you foresee?

► When you visited me (Chief Exec), I told you about the direction the Trust was taking. What can you tell me about it and how can you contribute?

► Do we have anything to fear from ISTCs?

► When you make a patient information leaflet using patient groups, do you think they self-select and are therefore not necessarily unbiased? What level do you pitch your information at? Which side do you lean towards: explaining in very simple terms or more detailed? How do you stop yourself from using medical parlance?

☛ Tell me the top 3 things that make you stand out for this job.

☛ How will you work with local GPs in this job?

☛ Tell me about a clinical audit that you have done in the last 12 months that has resulted in service improvement.

☛ How would you deal with a junior doctor who is not performing well.

☛ What are the difficulties you could face as a clinician dealing with your managers?

☛ How would you work with your managers to develop the service?

☛ How do you think the new White Paper will affect your service?

☛ Give me some examples of how you have involved service users over the last 12 months.

☛ What aspects of the job do you think you will need help with in the first year?

☛ What would you need a mentor to help you with in the first year?

► One of your consultant colleagues is underperforming or his quality of care is unsatisfactory. What do you do?

► One of your juniors complains to you that they are being bullied by another consultant. How do you handle the situation?

► One of your junior colleagues comes in late by over 20 minutes repeatedly. What do you do?

► Your registrar reports to you that his SHO has been coming late for 20 minutes each day over the past 4 days. What do you do?

► One of your juniors keeps contradicting you in front of patients. What do you do?

► A senior consultant turns up drunk for work one morning. How do you handle the situation?

► You overhear two nurses talk about the fact that one of your registrars was taking cocaine last Friday when he went clubbing. How do you address the situation?

► Assuming that you report a colleague's bad performance to your clinical director. What would you expect him to do about it?

► What difference do you make between lack of fitness to practice and underperformance?

► What role does NCAS play in dealing with underperformance?

► Explain the gaps in your CV.

► Whay do you think that the Royal College encourages trainees to undertake research?

► How do you think we can better integrate sexual health and contraceptive services, bearing in mind staff numbers and constraints?

► How would you overcome the barriers to integration between sexual health and contraception?

► If a Fairy Godmother came along and gave you £500k to do some research, what would you do and how would you do it?

► How would you compare service standards between departments from results of questionnaire surveys bearing in mind that different specialities do different things and may be graded differently?

► What makes a good / bad teacher?

► How would you deal with an underperforming junior? What would you do if despite your best efforts there was no improvement?

► What would you do to improve the service?

► What would you have done differently in your career?

► What is your ppinion on the changing working hours in laboratory medicine?

► What are the difficulties with getting involved in research when laboratory facilities are off site?

► What is the impact of new GP consortia/clinical senates and how should we engage with these to determine service provision?

► How an we improve quality and innovation in microbiology?

► Give an example of a clinical mistake you made.

► What risk would the Trust be taking in employing you?

► Beyond my service provision role, what could you offer the trust that another candidate couldn't?

► How would you go about bringing about a change in policy?

► Why do you want this position?

► Why do you want to work at this hospital?

► Tell us about your fellowship

► How did they keep the staff happy at that institution?

► What have you heard about PCTs funding AF ablation?

► Who will you need to talk to when asking for funding for AF ablation?

► How will you construct your argument for funding AF ablation?

► Tells us about a complication during a procedure that you had.

► What will you do in the first 6 months at this trust?

► What is your first peer reviewed grant that you will put in?

► What is the difference in applying to an AHSC, or to a FT?

► What is the difference between a SL position and a Consultant position.

► How do you deal with an underperforming colleague.

► How does the hospital as a whole deal with the outside community.

► Name an instance when you have saved money for the hospital you have worked in.

► If all your colleagues were in the room what would they say your strengths were?

► And your weaknesses?

► On a scale where one end is value and the other is results, where do you put yourself?

► What is the tariff for AF ablation?

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► Tell us about yourself.

► What would your ideal job plan look like?

► Out of the job plans on offer, which one would you prefer and how does your training make you suitable for it?

► You are wearing a tie bearing the arms of the royal college. Explain.

► If you were appointed how would you help the new PFI?

► What do you know about the new elective emergency split? What are the pros and cons?

► How would you reassure me that I won't be called for questionning by the GMC to discuss your conduct?

► Have you had any critical incidents? What did you learn and how?

► Are we doing enough nationally in terms of audits?

► Are our systems robust enough?

► What are the timelines and developments for revalidation? Tell us about the logistics.

► How would you increase theatre efficiency and save money?

► Will you be working in theatres or trying to solve all the problems outside the theatre environment?

► How can you work with people as a team to improve efficiency?

► Will you accept any job or a specific job plan?

► Praise the Trust.

► Presentation (Topic given 30 minutes beforehand): How will you contribute to the development of new and existing gastroenterology services in this Trust?

► Could you take us through your experience as a junior doctor?

► Tell us more about your speciality training.

► Describe your experience of therapeutic endoscopy.

► Do SpRs take place in a bleeding rota in the North-West?

► How do you know you are competent in managing emergency GI bleeding?

► The service need for Hepatitis C is increasing. Would you be prepared to treat Hepatitis C if appointed?

► Are you familiar with Kieran Moriarty's alcohol service and recent guidelines?

► Would you be willing to develop an alcohol service within the Trust? How would you develop it?

► Let's say you estimated that £50,000 was required to fund an alcohol specialist nurse. How would you achieve this funding within the current financial climate?

► Describe a recent study or guideline that has changed your clinical practice.

► Are you an advocate of top down biological therapy in Crohns?

► Give two examples of basic scientific research that have changed clinical practice.

► You receive an email from me (clinical director) when you arrive at work one morning informing you that the hospital is on red alert. What would you do?

► It is 2013 and the GP commissioning consortium decides to reduce the tariff on open access gastroscopy to that equivalent to an outpatient appointment. How would you manage this? What is the current tariff for an open access gastroscopy?

► How do you anticipate that planned changes in NHS configuration will affect gastroenterology services?

► If you were successful and were offered this consultant post, you will come at a cost of £4.5m to this trust over your career. How will you prove to be a worthwhile investment for the Trust?

► What is your opinion on the recently published white paper?