HIV Consultant

☛ 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?

☛ 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 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?

☛ 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?

First interview (HR Director + 2 consultants)

☛ Why do you want this job?

☛ Tell me about something you have innovated on this year.

☛ What problems have encountered in supervising junior staff?

☛ Tell me how you used evidence-based medicine in your practice in the past 12 months?

☛ There have been 45 people applying for this job. Why should we give it to you?

Second interview (Full panel of 8)

☛ 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?

☛ 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.

☛ Take us through your CV and your histopathology training.

☛ Who should run the MDT meetings? (Question asked by a surgeon).

☛ One of the consultants in the department complains their workload is excessive. What do you do?

☛ How would you describe yourself in relation to the way you work in a team?

☛ How would you improve efficiency in the lab?

☛ You are reporting a metastatic malignant melanoma. Looking at the previous histology, which is a skin biopsy, this was reported as a benigh naevs but is clearly a melanoma that has been missed. You were the reporting pathologist. What do you do next?

☛ How would you ensure that your department is working well and demonstrates excellence?

☛ What is the Trust's future direction and how can you contribute towards it?

☛ You talked so passionately about teaching that I am now wondering why you applied for a post which does not have a big teaching component. Why?

☛ Tell us about your Research Fellowship in Canada.

☛ How does the Canadian system compare to the UK system?

☛ What are the pros and cons of MDTs?

☛ MDTs may involve sharing patient images and scans. What are your views regarding potential problems with this sharing?

☛ How should we implement new radiotherapy technologies?

☛ What model should we employ in setting up satellite RT centres? Resident doctors or visiting doctors with extended roles for other professionals?

☛ If you extend roles, where would you draw the line? Should radiographers prescrive RT?

☛ Does palliative RT lend itself to delivery of a satellite centre?

☛ How would you set up an acute oncology service?

☛ What are your general thoughts on audits?

☛ How would you prioritise what needs auditing?

☛ What is your experience of patient reported outcome measures? Would the results of these influence your practice?

☛ You only had 3 publications in peer reviewed journals before going to Canada. Do you think that is acceptable?

☛ Seeing as clinical oncologists need to know everything a medical oncologist does and then more, do we need to increase the length of clinical oncology training?

☛ Should we split into radiation oncology and medical oncology in the UK?

☛ Are there any things that our centre could learn from yours?

☛ How is the critical care in your hospital run?

☛ What are the problems you envisage for stand alone cancer centres in the future?

☛ You will need to train SpRs. How will you deal with an SpR who is underperforming?

☛ This post involves working closely in a team with two other consultants. What are your perceived advantages and disadvantages of this approach?

☛ An article in the NEJM indicates the Cancer Plan wasn't working despite a massive investment of money. What is you opinion?

☛ What is the difference between clinical governance and clinical effectiveness?

☛ Describe an audit which you have done.

☛ Where do you see your role given the planned restructuring of pathology services (Carter report) and what are the advantages and disadvantages of the proposals.

☛ What makes a good leader!

☛ Where do you see yourself in 5 years time?

☛ What advancements do you think you will have made to the department and how do you plan to develop the service over the next 5 years?

☛ Are you happy just giving clinical advice (as a consult) without full responsibility of the patient? What do you do if the advice is then ignored?

☛ How would you save costs in pathology?

☛ Can you tell me how your training has prepared you for a post as a Consultant in Paediatric Anaesthesia?

☛ Panel requested more detail on a couple of audits

☛ This is not an academic post but how will you contribute to academic anaesthesia at this trust?

☛ In 5 years time, a post for a Senior Clinical Lecturer in Undergraduate training is advertised. Would you be interested?

☛ You are in theatre with a diaphragmatic hernia when another surgeon tells you he has a really sick neonate in NICU with NEC. How will you manage this?

☛ You are repairing a hernia thoracoscopically when you suddenly find the child’s CO2 goes up. How will you manage this situation?

☛ Bearing in mind the HDU/ITU facilities in this hospital, how will manage a child who needs a Nissen’s fundoplication who has suddenly aspirated while on the ward?

☛ How do you measure efficiency?

☛ What efficiency strategies would you like to introduce if you were appointed?

☛ Where do you see the role of Chelsea in North West London in the Paediatric Surgical Network?

☛ You will have read about CQUINS and QIPPS in preparation for your interview. What do you understand by the term innovation?

☛ What innovations will you introduce to the trust?

☛ You are in theatre with a trainee who isn’t performing to the standards that you would expect. You question him during a long boring case and find out that about 2 weeks ago, he was with a senior colleague who shouted at him in front of the whole theatre team and he has been feeling very demotivated since. How do you handle this?

☛ He then tells you he could smell alcohol on your colleague’s breath. How do you handle this?

☛ How do you deal with a senior underperforming trainee?

☛ How would you respond to a complaint letter?

☛ Presentation on "How would you use the opportunity to make the services in this hospital first class?"

☛ Tell us about yourself.

☛ How do your friends describe you?

☛ You have not done any research or publication, has this been a conscious decision...not to be involved in research?

☛ Would you like to continue your masters in medical education? Is it a part-time or distance learning course.

☛ What do you think of GMC revalidation?

☛ How will you provide leadership to such a big unit?

☛ Is there anything you learned in other units that you would like to bring to our unit?

☛ You said you want to set up combined obstetrics and cardiac medicine clinic in the unit....will that improve outcome for patients?

☛ A midwife comes to you and complains that the SHO on call for labour ward is seen to use opiates on duty and seen to walk around with hypodermic needles and syringe in his pockets. How will you handle this situation?

☛ How will you develop the education programme or the post-graduate trainees in the unit?

☛ Where do you see yourself 10 years from now?

☛ Do you feel you are ready to become a consultant?

☛ Tell us about a recent NICE guideline which you tried to implement in your department. What problems did you face in implementation?

☛ What experience have you had as a registrar which would help you meet the challenges of the role of a consultant?

☛ Do you feel you had enough time for your training...did EWTD affect it in anyway?

☛ Tell us about a recent AIRS form that you filled in.

☛ If we employ you, what will you do for the first 6 months?

☛ Chief Executive: If you get the job, what will you ask me?

☛ What is the risk in employing you? How can we help mitigate the risk?

☛ Do you have any questions for us?

☛ What service would you develop in your department and how?

☛ How would you reduce the costs of the department by 20%?

☛ How do you know that your teaching methods work?

☛ Are there any published studies on the outcomes of teaching?

☛ To produce a good undergraduate teaching, we will need to run less clinics or see less patients in clinics. How can you defend/argue this?

☛ Our hospital has poor feedback on patient experience. What one thing do you think we could change to improve this?

☛ In the current times when there is demand to see more patients, how can you defend spending time in research?

☛ What is the most interesting paper you have read this year and why?

☛ There is pressure to move some specialities into the community. What arguments would you use to keep your speciality hospital-based?

☛ 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.

The most dreadful of them all. The one where they ask you to take about your own personal mistakes, mess-ups and overall failures.

This one always feels like a trap—how can they possibly give a job to someone who has failed!!—but it’s really not. The truth is you’re human and you’ve made a mistake or two on the job before. So has everyone. So has your interviewer.

No one likes talking about failure, but it can be very helpful to a prospective employer to hear you talk about how you handle it. Avoid placing blame on anyone and focus on what you learned from the experience that you choose to share. Again, like your answers to the prior questions, don’t be afraid to talk about your personal experiences.

“Never underestimate the power of the story,” Lin says. “It can convince a company that one won't quit at the first sign of a better paycheck.”

(Word to the wise: Don’t go into “full honesty” mode on this one. Definitely don’t lie, but you may want to avoid telling the interviewer about the three hazmat incidents you caused in your last job.)

How you should answer: “I learned the hard way about how to manage night shifts about five years ago. I was so used to managing day shifts that I realized there was a whole culture of the night shift that I was unfamiliar with. On top of that, the hours were killing me. But I paid attention to my more seasoned colleagues and did some real soul-searching about how I could better handle managing the job. My first six months were tough, but after I made a few key adjustments, I great to really like that job at that time.”

There are many different symptoms that can indicate HIV infection. However, many of these symptoms are similar to other common illnesses. The most common symptoms are very similar to the early stages of flu or a cold but without the runny nose.

They include:-

☛ - Fatigue (feeling tired)

☛ - Slight fever that lasts for a few weeks

☛ - Headaches

☛ - Muscular pain

☛ - Not wanting to eat normally

☛ - Feeling sick or nauseous

☛ - Swollen glands in the groin or under your arms or at the back of your neck

☛ - Sometimes a rash that will not go away

☛ - Sometimes a dry cough that is unrelated to smoking

☛ - Woman also tend to have a persistent vaginal thrush that doesn't heal rapidly

If you have any of these symptoms and they continue for more than a few weeks, get to your doctor or clinic. Remember, early intervention is the key to living longer with HIV.

A person of any age, sex, race, ethnic group, religion, economic background, or sexual orientation can get HIV.

Those who are most at risk are:

• people who have “unprotected sex” with someone who has HIV. Unprotected sex means vaginal, anal, or oral sex without using a condom.

• people who share needles, syringes, or other equipment to inject drugs, steroids, or even vitamins or medicine with someone who has HIV.

• Babies can potentially become infected during their mothers’ pregnancy, during delivery, or after birth in the immediate post-partum period. They can also become infected through breastfeeding.

A person of any age, sex, race, ethnic group, religion, economic background, or sexual orientation can get HIV.

• Health care and maintenance workers who may be exposed to blood and/or body luids at work sometimes get infected through on-the-job exposures like needle-stick injuries

As of December 2007, more than 180,674 persons in New York State had been diagnosed with AIDS; approximately 73,889 of those persons are still living. Of those 73,889 persons living with AIDS:

• 44% are African American.

• 30% are Hispanic.

• 25% are white.

• 0.7% are Asian/Paciic Islander.

• 0.1% are Native American.

• 26% are women.

• 5% are under the age of 25.

• 15% are over the age of 50.

AIDS has been diagnosed in people living in every county of New York State.

However, 79% of New Yorkers currently living with AIDS were living in New York

City at the time they were diagnosed.

In June 2000, New York State began reporting cases of people diagnosed with HIV only (not AIDS) in addition to reporting AIDS cases. Since then, New York State counts and reports HIV cases separately from AIDS cases. As of June 30,

2007, there were 46,040 persons in New York State living with HIV (but not AIDS).

Of those persons:

• 44% are African American.

• 29% are Hispanic.

• 24% are white.

• 1.3% are Asian/Paciic Islanders.

• 0.1% are Native American.

• 33% are women.

• 8% are under the age of 25.

• 26% are over the age of 50.

Of those New Yorkers who are currently living with HIV (but not AIDS), 77% of them were living in New York City at the time they were diagnosed.

The State Department of Health also tracks the “risk factors” identiied by people who test positive for HIV. The risk factor is the most likely way a person became infected. Of the persons currently living with AIDS in New York State:

• 29% have a risk factor of using intravenous drugs.

• 30% are men with a risk factor of having sex with men.

• 16% have a risk factor of heterosexual sex.

Injection drug use (through sexual contact with an injection drug user, or infants infected prenatally) was the direct or indirect cause of infection for 44 percent of the persons in New York State who were living with AIDS as of December 2002.

Of all cases with known risk, 52.3 percent are directly or indirectly attributable to injection drug use.