Tessa Davis outlines three ways clinicians can show they're ready for an NHS consultant role: focus on population-level outcomes instead of just one-to-one care, master governance processes like DATIX reporting and incident investigations, and drive service-improvement initiatives that enhance patient flow and reduce costs.
Here are 3 ways to show that you are ready to step up as a consultant and show senior-level thinking. 1, you provide service beyond one-to-one care. As a reg, we really focused on delivering the best care to the patient right in front of us. And of course, we still want to do this as a consultant, but actually our main goal is delivering the best care to the population that we serve for our service as a whole. Showing you understand governance processes really well. As a senior clinician, knowing governance is massively important to our role. This is what it means to be a senior part of the team and to make sure we're delivering a quality service. This is going to include DATIXs, audits, guidelines, complaints handling, and serious incident investigations. You need to be able to demonstrate senior-level thinking. This means showing how to improve services, understanding what the ideal service is, and steps that you would take to improve patient flow, to improve effectiveness of the service, or to cut costs or wastage. If you can do that, you're showing that you're thinking like a consultant at the service level delivery of quality care to our patients.
