EP 39: How to Prove You’re a Safe Doctor in a Consultant Interview
In this episode Tessa Davis and Becky discuss practical strategies for consultant job interviews for doctors, focusing on how to demonstrate safety and professionalism. They first address whether candidates should bring up personal complaints during interviews, concluding that it is generally best to avoid unless explicitly asked, and to frame any discussion around managing complaints rather than being the subject of one. They then evaluate how to select appropriate examples of mistakes, distinguishing between a small, personal learning incident and a larger duty‑of‑candour case, advising that the former is preferable for a ‘mistake’ example while a duty‑of‑candour incident can be used when the focus is on transparency and learning. The core of the episode is a step‑by‑step guide to answering the common interview question “How do you know you’re a safe doctor?” – they recommend highlighting appraisal and revalidation, evidence‑based practice, complication rates or audit data (for surgeons), CPD activities, reflective learning after challenging cases, mentorship, and concrete examples of continuous professional development. Finally, they provide a “tip and trick” on seeking post‑interview feedback: why it matters, how to phrase a request politely after emotions settle, how to follow up if no reply, and how to evaluate whether feedback is constructive, using specific question‑by‑question examples. Throughout, they stress presenting the “shiniest” version of oneself, keeping stories concise, and using feedback to gauge appointability and improve future performance.
Chapters
Many people miss out on a great learning opportunity by not asking for feedback after their interview.
In this episode, we're going to look at whether or not you should talk about a complaint that's been made against you in your interview. And we're going to look at how to answer the question, how do you know you're a safe doctor? Let's get into it. All right, let's get stuck in with our student question of the week. This is a question that has been asked to us by one of our Academy students. So today we have the question, is it okay to use an example from a complaint that you have been personally involved in? What do you reckon?
I mean, my initial kind of gut response to this is absolutely not. Yeah, there may be a little bit of nuance around this which we could get into, but if you're asked for, you know, a question like You know, how do you respond to complaints? What do you know about the complaints process? Tell us about a time you managed a complaint. They're not asking you to tell them about a time when somebody made a complaint about you, so don't, don't throw yourself under the bus unnecessarily. This is for you to demonstrate your ability to manage complaints, to de-escalate stuff in the moment if it's a verbal complaint, to understand the process end to end, to talk about learning to demonstrate senior-level thinking. There is no requirement for you to tell them about a time when somebody made a complaint about you unless you're specifically asked to do that. And I actually can't recall a situation where that's happened.
No. I mean, I suppose they might occasionally, because they'd have to say specifically, yeah, tell me about a complaint someone has made about you. It would be a weird question to ask. Yeah, I can't think of it being asked like that, but definitely people's interpretation of the mention of complaints, you automatically go to like, oh yes, this happened to me. And yeah, I think it's just push yourself away from doing that. So, the don't throw yourself under the bus policy is a good one. And just remembering, it's your interview, you want them to give you a job, you're trying to answer authentically, but it's not a tell-all, warts-and-all kind of experience. You're giving your best bits. Like you said, there's loads of better ways to showcase your complaints experience. Much better you're the person answering complaints for the department rather than someone complaining about you.
Yeah.
And I'd probably go on even further is that when people are using examples of mistakes or conflict, just don't use an example where it ends with, and the patient made the complaint about me, because it just takes it to another level of conflict or mistake or stress. that I don't think you really need.
Yeah. I also think, you know, if you happened to get a question that was, tell us about a time when somebody made a complaint about you, how did it feel? For heaven's sake, just pick something that was small and easily remedied.
Yeah.
You know, we don't need to be discussing something that, you know, resulted in an SI investigation. It's an external review. And then, you know, a whole thing where the whole trust had to learn from an absolute mistake that you made.
Yeah.
So, keep it small, keep it well contained, and keep it something that was wrapped up and sorted out pretty quickly.
Yes, and in general, we want you to be yourself in your interview, but just the best bits. Just the best bits of yourself, because you don't want to put them off. And they can find out all the— they've got years to find out all the other bits about you. So, you're just giving the shiniest version of yourself in the interview. And so therefore, I would not use a complaint unless pressed to. Cool. Okay. So, let's talk about a golden example. This is an example that a student has suggested they might use. So, what example have we got this week?
I'm guessing this is from a radiologist. A patient had a CT abdo. But it actually transpired that the information was already available from a previous recent CT, and then this triggered a radiation safety investigation, and I felt awful because I'd overlooked the previous scan report when I was just quickly assessing the patient's history. Is that an okay example of a mistake to use?
It's quite a long-winded explanation, I think, is the first thing. So, we were just talking about this before we went through this example, and we had to read through it several times to try and understand it, get to the bottom of it. So, I think it's a bit wordy, but in the end, the scenario is we scanned a patient that actually had a CT scan of their abdomen that didn't need it because we already had the results.
Mm-hmm.
We just hadn't looked. So that is a mistake. I don't know, to me it feels like quite a big mistake because you're doing an abdo CT in a patient that didn't need it. Do you think it's too big?
Yeah, I mean, if somebody had presented this to me as a mistake that somebody else had made, I would have told them this was a good duty of candour example. And I suppose that's the way to look at it, because actually this patient has been caused harm.
Yeah.
That they've had unnecessary radiation, and it's triggered a radiation safety investigation, which, you know—
Yeah, that's kind of a big deal.
Sounds bad.
It sounds bad, yeah.
So, I think we're looking ideally for mistakes. There needs to be a consequence, but ideally we don't want there to have been harm as such, and we don't want there really to have been an investigation that needed to take place. And I think if you're describing a mistake, it should be something where you've taken some personal learning from it, maybe there's some thoughts and reflections that you can share with your team that are useful for them.
Yeah, but it's not a national incident.
No, exactly. We don't want an independent parliamentary review on that.
No, that's too much. But this could actually be a good one for duty of candour, if they could then just kind of start at the duty of candour part and kind of swear of the preliminary in that this happened to a patient. A patient in our service was given a CT abdomen when actually it should have been noticed that this investigation had already been done.
Yeah.
It was my job to do duty of candour. And then actually it's pretty good because you're delivering serious, pretty serious duty of candour. It's going to be a big deal potentially for the patient, but you are separating yourself from the mistake. And even though it's the same story, if you don't get into the mistake part of it, then you don't feel the need to explain why you made the mistake. Or, you know, because when you're sharing a mistake, your natural instinct is going to be to over-explain why you did it, why you're really good, and how you've remedied it. But in a duty of candour example, they don't really want to know that. They're asking about your duty of candour delivery and your experience of that and going through the steps with the family. So, yeah, I think it could be a good duty of candour example. Yeah.
Yeah.
But probably too big a deal for a mistake example, I think.
Yeah, because as a duty of candour example, it's nice because it gives you the opportunity to talk about, you know, we've probably done an incident report here, it's a bit of an investigation, now we're thinking about risk management, maybe we're thinking about changing our processes, we're sharing some teaching and learning with the rest of the department. There's tonnes to talk about, and that's not really what we want from a mistake example. When it should be something that you can own as a smallish mistake that you personally have learned from.
Next, we're going to look at an interview question, and we're going to break down how to answer it. This question that we're going to look at today, I would say, is a fairly common question that gets asked. And the question is, how do you know you're a safe doctor? Pretty common question. How would you approach this?
Yeah, this is quite common. We hear this or a version of this coming up pretty regularly. So I think the first thing to say is, you know, how do I know I'm a safe doctor is not— the response is not just, well, nobody's complained about me and I haven't had any serious investigations or serious incidents. That's not where the bar is. I think, you know, we're looking for a bit more than that. And I think there probably needs to be a bit of thought into this question around how do I know that I'm safe, separate from how do I know that the department or the service is safe. So some of this is about, you know, you as an individual. I guess it is things You know, like, um, you know, evidence-based medicine, um, your own particular learning areas of expertise, um, things that you've worked on, or, um, particular projects, for example. I think often for people in surgical specialties, talking about your own, um, logbook and complication rate—
Yeah.
Can actually be really helpful. in this kind of question.
Appraisal.
Not so, yeah, appraisal. Yeah. What else would you put in there?
I think appraisal. So not every— obviously if you're just finishing your training, you won't necessarily have had an appraisal. You've done your ARCPs, which are in a way like they're similar. They're also making sure you're safe. If you've done an appraisal, I would definitely talk about this here because that's the goal, is, well, one of the goals of appraisal is to make sure you're safe. So it's reviewing us pause to check your practice is okay, to go through any issues that have arisen, to make sure you've got a plan. So, I would definitely— and also because if you've done appraisal, you've got experience that some people won't have, like people who've just gone through training and CCT won't have done one. And so, it gives you a good opportunity to talk about that because that is what you'll be doing as a consultant each year. So, yeah, I think appraisal and then probably just breaks down the elements of appraisal. If you're, like you said, if you're a surgeon, you've got your complication rates and so on. If you're not a surgeon, you're not really going to have that sort of thing. But I think just remembering that audits, like you said, there's a separation between you being a safe doctor and us delivering a safe service. This question is you being a safe doctor. So doing an audit on the departmental practice isn't actually about you being a safe doctor. You are actively— You are being actively involved in the quality process, but that's about the service as a whole. So this is, how do you know you're safe? So yeah, I would steer— I would also just steer away from the complaints. Think about the things you've done. If you're talking about CPD or staying up to date, you talk about conferences. You can talk about conferences you've been to, journal articles you've read, maybe research you've been involved with, so that you know that you're delivering good practice to your patients. You could talk about feedback. So I'm always a bit unsure about people talking about their MSFs because they're always a bit samey, I think. And we know that you ask people who like you to fill out your MSF. So getting good feedback on your MSF, I feel, is a bit subjective and not a very clear way to present to the panel. But I think in this question you could say that's part of it, and certainly when you're doing your revalidation as part of your appraisal, you do feedback from patients and staff every 5 years. So if you've done that, I would include that.
I think you can also talk about, you know, if I've had a particularly difficult or challenging case, or if something's come up that was relatively new to me, then I, you know, debrief that with a mentor or a trusted colleague.
Yeah.
I go away and actively learn about it to make sure that I'm, you know, keeping myself up to date. Then sometimes I impart that knowledge to other people in my team. And, you know, use an example, just briefly. For example, I saw a patient with X. It was something that I hadn't dealt with for a while, and afterwards I went away and looked up the latest evidence, and this is what I've learned from it. Because I think it's useful to show that you're somebody who is open to learning and continuing professional development, and that you do that in an active way.
Yeah, what you were saying about thinking about after something's happened, like going away and learning about it and reading about it, but the whole idea of reflection, I think, is an important part. It's part of when you're going through your training, having that in your portfolio is really important. And I think just the concept of formally reflecting on your experience as a way of improving yourself is a good idea to bring in here as well. But really, you just want to pick 3 things that you feel happy talking about that are related to this. You don't need to cover everything.
No, so I think those are a few ideas, and it's just useful to have some examples up your sleeve, just so that the panel gets a sense of who you are and the sort of thing that you do as a, as a learner and somebody who takes your professional development seriously.
Yeah, but definitely prep for this because it's— we see it come up fairly commonly, I think. Okay, and now we're going to go on to our tip and trick. So this tip and trick is about asking for feedback after your interview. So people do find this a real challenge, which is you get told— let's assume you get told you did— you were not successful. Um, or you've had interviews maybe recently where you're not successful. Do you think people should be asking for feedback? How should they be asking for feedback? What do they do with that feedback? What are your thoughts?
I think this is absolute gold if you get some meaningful feedback. Um, and I think that the way to do it is to, you know, let the dust settle, let your own emotions just settle down for a minute. Um, and Then to go back to somebody on the panel, generally by email, and to say, you know, I've— I was really disappointed to be unsuccessful last week. I'm trying to improve my interview performance for next time, and I would be really grateful if you could give me some feedback. And I would actually just be specific and say, if possible, I would value question-by-question feedback, either in an email or on a call so that I can really learn where my areas for improvement are.
Yeah, I think often people might send that email and then not get a reply, um, and then they don't know how much to follow up. Yeah, I think, I think there's lots of reasons why people don't reply, and mostly it's not because they don't want to say anything, it's just time. It's like not that easy to send that feedback in an email. And it may be just that people are putting it in the think about it later basket. This is where I think you can do a follow-up and just explain why it's important. Like, if you— this has been an issue before, you know, this is now my 6th interview that I've been unsuccessful at. I've got another one coming up in a month, and I'd really like to be able to make a change to improve my, uh, performance. And it, you know, it would mean a lot to me if you could. Take the time to give me some comments.
Yeah.
And if you just kind of explain why, why you want it, um, I think people would be happy to help. So I guess guessing the feedback is the first thing, and then what the feedback is is a bit of a different kettle of fish because I think not all feedback is constructive. And so I think it's hard to separate— how do you know, is this feedback helpful? And what can, what can you take from it? What sort of stuff have you seen that's helpful, or maybe, maybe not so helpful?
I think the stuff that is particularly unhelpful is people just— I think they do this out of kindness— they say something like, um, unfortunately there was just a stronger candidate on the day who scored a couple of points more than you.
Yeah.
Okay, that's great. Maybe it's true. Maybe on another day you would have, you know, if that candidate had answered one question slightly less well, it would have been you. But you don't know. So I think that the people that have had the most useful feedback is where they've, you know, had particular feedback on specific questions. You know, for example, we asked you a question about clinical governance and you didn't demonstrate that you had an overview that was senior level. Yeah, you showed us that you understand how to submit a DATEx form, but you didn't show us that you know what happens next, what you would need to do as a consultant, what the department would need to consider, and what would happen next if that needed to be escalated.
Yeah.
Now you've got something that you can actually ask.
That's good feedback.
Yeah, and I think if, you know, if there are questions that you maybe thought, oh, Crikey, you know, I just came up, I didn't know what to say, got asked a question about metrics, didn't know what a metric was. Um, then, then you, then you say to the panel, I do remember there was a question on metrics, can you, can you just maybe tell me what you would have expected in that answer?
Yeah.
Um, some— something like that. I, I know it feels, you know, everyone's busy, it feels like you're badgering them, but personally, I feel that it's the responsibility of the interview panel to Kind of give that end-to-end, I suppose, care of the candidates. And I never mind if people ask me for feedback afterwards, even though it's a bit painful sometimes.
Yeah. But also, as the receiver of the feedback, you need to be in a place where you are ready to hear it. And I think that goes back to what you said about when things have kind of settled down for you, that when you're feeling in that raw emotional state of you're upset, you're annoyed, you feel you were robbed, whatever it is, or you're annoyed with yourself, you might not be in a place to be able to take that on board, and you don't know how they're going to deliver feedback. You are not in control. They could be really mean, or they might say nothing that's useful at all. You have to just be in a place where you're prepared to receive whatever is given and then decide what's useful from it.
Yeah.
And not everything is useful. They could also pick on one particular thing because that's the only thing they can remember or think of to say, But it doesn't mean that's the thing that's going to have made or broken your interview chances. It'll be a combination of an overall thing rather than one particular question. But I think, yeah, you've given a really good example of specific feedback that people could take something from. And sometimes it can be done really well, and I think it's genuinely from a place of trying to help the person. Other times, I feel it can be just to persuade themselves that they've made the right decision. Um, and maybe is not as focused on helping the person who didn't get it. Um, but I think it's good to ask.
If, if you're still in a position, or if, you know, and, and you're thinking, it's not fair, they obviously had some other candidate in mind, that it was a done deal before I even went in the room, there was nothing I could have done, but then you're not in the position, you're not in the right place to hear that feedback. Um, you need to hear it, think, okay, is there anything in here for me?
Yeah.
That I can usefully take away and that I could realistically change, even though it might be painful, uncomfortable, and really, frankly, not what I wanted to hear. Do I need to hear this and act on it? Or, okay, look, I, I actually don't, don't think that that really is going to make a huge amount of difference to me. I'm going to park it, I'm going to continue to prep, and then I'm going to do better next time anyway.
Yeah, yep. And one thing that's— that is good to find out is, were you appointable or not appointable? Because that's the difference between it being, you know, a, a bad interview, uh, um, versus maybe you were just pipped at the post by someone who was better on the day. So it also helps give you a good baseline to know, were you like in the realm of what was reasonable for a consultant interview, or were you miles away? Because that can help you Work out how to focus your prep for next time, and you may have a sense of that. Like if you think about it, really reflect on it: how you were with your prep, how you felt before, you know, how the answers went on the day, how much work you put in. But yeah, I think if you find that you were not appointable, then you need to dig deep in order to prep for the next time. And the whole point of getting the feedback is so that next time you can do better and get, you know, perform to your max. Make sure you don't leave anything to chance. Make sure you're the person who pips someone at the post. That's what you're trying to do. So it should be something that you can use, take from, and improve. Okay, I think we will wrap up there. Thank you, Becky. We will be back next week with lots of other great stuff, including looking at how to end your answers smoothly. So we'll see you then.
Bye.
