AI Questions in Your Consultant Interview — Here's Exactly What the Panel Wants to Hear

When the panel asks you about AI, they're not testing your knowledge or expertise. They're asking whether you are somebody that can help take their department and their team to meet the requirements of the NHS plan from analog to digital.

Hi, I'm Tessa.

And I'm Becky. And this is the Ace Your Consultant Interview podcast, where we help you stand out and succeed in your consultant interview.

Before we get into today's episode, if you're prepping for your interview, make sure you're signed up to our free 5-day email crash course. It breaks down exactly what you need to do to stand out, and you can sign up via the link in the description. So our Academy doors are open, but they're actually closing today at midnight, which is the day this episode goes out, which is on Monday the 22nd of June. So come and join us if you haven't yet. We'll share the link to sign up and come and join us in the show notes, and can't wait to see you there. All right, let's get stuck in. So, first up, we've got a question from one of our Academy students for this week. And the question is, AI seems to keep coming up in interviews. Do I need a position on it? And if so, what should my position be? What do you think?

It's true, AI does keep coming up in interviews.

It does.

So it's real news, um, and people do worry about it. So I think, I think you do need a position on it. And really the position is, you know, the, the NHS plan references, you know, the fact that we're supposed to be moving from analog to digital. So you probably need some kind of comments that you can make on AI. And I think, you know, in some specialties this is moving faster than in others. And, you know, for example, one of our students is a radiologist. They're using some AI software to interpret X-rays, I think. You know, in our specialty and in lots of other specialties, we're using AI note-takers.

We love it.

I absolutely love that.

We love the note-taker.

Um, my typing's so rubbish that it works brilliantly for me. Um, so I think, you know, you, you do need to be able to say something about it. What do you think?

Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it's a hot topic, and if you literally are terrified at the thought of being asked a question about it, then even more so you should Think about how you're going to answer it. And if it's not being used in your specialty, I'd probably have a think about how it might be used. AI note takers are the most obvious one, because you could use that in any specialty. We just have it, we've got an app on our phone. And we just stick it, I just put the phone basically on the desk or whatever, when, or the bed when we take a patient into a room and just records the whole consult. And it connects to our— Electronic record. It's wonderful. And then you can edit it or whatever, but it's very much time-saving. That could be used in any specialty. So even take that as a free suggestion. Even if you're not using it, that is a way that it could be used. And you might get a feel in your pre-interview visits about how your department feels about this and what their thoughts are, because usually there's some people who are really like on top of trying to push it and maybe other people who are more resistant for various reasons. But yeah, I think that's the baseline. There's lots of ways you can use it in just education planning, mapping curriculums to program, teaching programs and stuff that doesn't involve direct clinical care. So yeah, I mean, you could definitely use it for that. You could use it for collating feedback, anonymized feedback or whatever. So there are ways that you can use it without it being as integral into clinical care as it is for in the radiology example.

Yeah, I was talking to some— oh, sorry, go on.

No, I was just gonna say the radiology, the radiologists, I think, are using it or trying to use it really well. I don't know how many are actually using it as the only way to interpret. But I know there's, from speaking to a few of our students, they're trialing it and using it alongside clinical decision-making just now and then seeing how it collates. But that is going to be a great way to use it. And I would— other specialties will have similar very cool ways to use AI.

Yeah. I was talking to somebody the other day who's doing some work designing simulations using AI. So for example, they take anonymized patient— real patient cases, anonymized— run that through AI, and they can get into— Oh, that's cool. Provide— yeah, we should do this— to make the story, to make the simulation, to produce the blood results, to all of the rest of it. So actually, there's many ways you could do it. I think one thing that is worth thinking about here, though, is what— because remember, it's sort of always elevating this to sort of senior-level thinking. What's the governance around this? What are the potential benefits and risks of this? For example, how are we going to ensure that the AI note-taker is taking notes appropriately and not inserting some weird aberration once in a while? And just making sure that there's an SOP or some training around that for people or whatever it might be. That's how to sort of think about that at a sort of system level rather than just, this is great because I don't have to do any typing anymore type of level. But that is also great. That is also great.

But yes, you're right. There's more to it than that. Yeah, that's cool. I love the SIM thing. That'd be so good because you could actually print off patient notes, you could anonymize it yourself, and then just scan it, like just take a picture of it and send it to Claude.

Claude, we love Claude.

And Claude could come up with a good— I love that idea. It's so easy to do.

Yeah, it's so good. Um, and they've managed to produce, you know, first— what does the first blood gas look like? What does the second blood gas look like?

Well, you can use real things and you can take the cases, like whatever your significant cases are, stuff with learning from it. Uh, that's very cool. Uh, so have we answered the question or have we moved on?

I can't remember. We had a great chat about AI.

Yeah, we did. Yeah, you want to think about how it applies to your specialty.

Yeah, do I need a position on it? So yes, you do. So I think it's about how might it apply in your specialty, but also a little bit about what's the governance around it and how do you make sure that it's safe in your specialty.

And now we're going to move on to the example. This is an example a student's given us of something they might use for a time they worked well within an MDT. So this is also on the AI theme where they've talked about Setting up an automated, an AI-assisted workflow that's a patient follow-up system to remind patients— I think it's to remind patients to attend their appointments, and it increased the attendance from 55% to 70%. So, this is their MDT example. What do you reckon about this?

Again, great. I really like it. Yeah, so you can talk about your AI stuff, you can reference the NHS 10-year plans. That's a nice little drop-in for you there. And again, as long as you can reference, how did you use the multidisciplinary team in order to do this QI or improve the workflow? Who was involved? Did you have people from IT? Probably someone around the governance around it. And then how did you get all the various different disciplines involved? In a way that added value. Um, I love it because it's got some data in there around improvement and follow-up rate. You know, we, we love the data. Um, I think it just elevates it to something that I'm kind of vaguely talking about to something that I really know about because I've actually got the numbers at my fingertips. Um, so I think, yeah, this is bang on as an example. I really like it.

Fab. Great work. Use this example.

It's excellent. Okay.

And then we're going on to an interview question. This is An actual interview question that someone has been asked recently in their interview. What question have we got this week?

So, what is the biggest risk in the department, and what would you do to tackle it? Ah, panic.

It's potentially a hard question because I do think people stress about this. What does that mean? How do I know the risks? But not an unreasonable question.

Exactly.

And the key is you should be able to find— you should have found this out in your pre-interview visits. So it's probably not something— if you didn't work— if you worked in the department, you might be able to take a guess. But if you didn't work in the department, you're not going to be able to know this unless you found out through your pre-interview visits. So how would you approach this? Would you just ask outright in your pre-interview visits? What do you reckon the best plan is?

I would. I mean, obviously, if you're already working there, speak to somebody and find out, you know, what the top 3 or the top 5 items are on your risk register. For people who are not necessarily aware of this, the Trust will have its own Trust-wide risk register, and your department will have its own departmental risk register, and the department is responsible for mitigating and managing those risks on a day-to-day basis. And you should know what the risks are, so If you're working there, ask somebody senior about it. If not, at your pre-interview visit, say, you know, I'm keen to understand as much as I can about the department. Can you just talk to me about your, you know, key areas of risk? You can probably predict them anyway. You know, it'd be— In A&E, clearly it's something about, you know, corridor care, lack of provision for mental health patients, overcrowding, you know, all of that kind of stuff. You know, for other specialties, there's probably something around RTT times, you know, something about workforce planning. Yeah, so I mean, also, you know, things like ligature risks and stuff like that come up. And then it's a case of, you know, working out whether you've got any projects or USPs or specific experience that align to managing those risks, and then talking about those things in a way that makes it clear that Not only are you aware of what the risks are, but you were the person to help the trust manage them.

Yeah, I think that's great. And it's so— it's such a contrast just by asking the question in the pre-interview visit, because it's the difference between hearing this question and being like, oh crap, I don't have a clue. And actually, you've just asked the question and you can show you asked it, you know, and you can say, I know because I spoke to whoever in my pre-interview visits that these are the things. And it just takes it like a whole different level of your understanding, how much you've bothered to do the work before the interview. And yeah, it's not rocket science, but you would need to have asked about it or thought about it before. So yeah, this is a really good one that you can find out before that would be very difficult to answer well without having thought about it in advance.

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, for example, if you've done a project around, you know, reducing some kind of risk. It might even be a sort of a flow management project.

Yeah.

Where you talk about something to do with efficiency. You can then talk about that, that reduces the risk of waiting times, you know, across whatever part of the pathway that is. You know, there may be something that you've done to improve patient environment for a specific group of patients, and that reduces the risk around that. But wherever you can, just be as specific as possible. If you haven't done a particular project, it could even be something like, well, you know, I'm aware that, you know, thinking about our department, one of our risks is that, you know, we don't necessarily have eyes on the waiting room at all times. So when I'm, you know, the person in charge, I make sure that somebody has walked through the waiting room every 10 or 15 minutes, eyeballed every patient that's in there to make sure that Nobody's quietly going off in the corner.

Yeah. Okay, good. I think we've covered that. So hopefully everyone now will have thought about it before, so it won't catch you off guard. Okay, and then we're going to look at our tip and trick of the week. So this is around if they ask you a question like about AI, or maybe like about electronic medical record implementation or something techy, and you don't see yourself as a tech person, How, I suppose it's how to prepare or think about how to answer this question, even though you might not fully understand the whole context of what they're asking you. What do you think about this?

I think you can't say, well, I'm not really particularly, you know, I'm not really particularly techie. You know, it's not an option in the NHS in 2023. I'm sorry to tell you that it just isn't. So I think there's, there's a way. So we, we don't need an apology around this. I'm sorry, I don't really understand. We, we don't need that, you know. I think, again, reference, I understand this is part of the, the, the 10-year plan.

Mhm.

Um, and then you can, you know, reference, you know, I've been trying to upskill myself by understanding this and that, you know, whatever it might be, something to do with AI. Um, So, so that they can see that you're working towards it. And, you know, as we talked about earlier on in the episode, if there are things that you can mention that are either going on in your department or might integrate well, um, then you could mention those.

Yeah.

Um, but I think, I think you've got to say something that shows that you're open to it at least.

Yes, because it's happening in the world and in the NHS, and yeah, you, you can't really just opt out and just Like not for me, especially if they're choosing to ask you a question. Now you you also won't know exactly how they all feel about it, and some of them may be nervous or feel like they don't understand as much as they wish they had. But in the end, the goal of the team and the department is to get on board and try and learn together. And so anything that you can draw in, thinking back to what we said at the beginning, like how for example ways you might have used AI or tech that aren't exactly spot on what they're saying, but show that you're in. Interested and you're starting to develop skills in it, I think would be helpful. But yeah, if they're choosing to ask you a question, it's because it's relevant to them. And so, you want to avoid saying, it's not relevant to me, because you know it's relevant to them, and that would not be a good match. So, it's fine that you're not the expert.

That's fine.

Assuming the job is not specific to being the expert in that area, it's okay. But you do need to show willing and interest, And potential, I think, is what's important.

Agreed.

Okay, I think we will wrap up there. We're going to be back next week with more great interview prep tips. We're going to talk a little bit about the challenges of workforce planning, staff retention, and how you can bring that into your interview. I will see you there.