Medical Consultant Interview Questions

A comprehensive list of consultant interview questions gathered from our years of experience of coaching candidates for consultant interviews.

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Background, training, the job & motivation questions

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?

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Generic skills questions

Communication

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?

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Team playing, Leadership & Initiative

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?

General

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?

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Academic & Clinical Governance questions

Teaching

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?

Research

Tell us about your research experience.
What is your understanding and experience of research governance?
What did you gain from your research?
Do you think that all trainees should do research?
What is the role and importance of research for a junior trainee?
How do you go about seeking ethical approval?
What are NRECs?
How would you go about seeking funding for your research?
Why should a DGH care about research when there are more pressing issues such as service provision and profitability?
Should all research be carried in tertiary centres or do DGHs have a role?

Clinical Governance & Safe Practice

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.

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Difficult colleagues & other difficult scenarios

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?

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Management & NHS Issues

How can you help our trust meet the 18-week target?
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?

You need to have thought about all these issues in order to demonstrate confidence and maturity. In our consultant interview skills course, we will give you everything you need and our much acclaimed handbook will give you the necessary summaries so you don't have too much reading to do.

For tips on how to prepare for an interview, see our page on consultant interview tips.