EP 52: Ditch the Resus Story, Use This MDT Example Instead

One of the best MDT working examples does not come from a dramatic resus. It comes from a project.

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. And the Academy waitlist is now open. If you want structured support for your consultant interview, join via the link in the description. In this episode, we're looking at how much clinical detail you actually need in an MDT example. We break down a golden example about turning a reporting audit into a department-wide fix, and we've got a tip about how not to let a setback derail your interview prep. Okay, welcome back to the next podcast episode. Nice to see you, Becky.

Nice to see you.

Let's get into it. So first up, we've got our question of the week from one of our Academy students. And the question this week is, how specific do I need to be about clinical details in an MDT example versus focusing on team dynamics? What do you reckon?

Okay, so the MDT working example is designed to show that you are somebody who can work well as part of a multidisciplinary team, that you can value all of those different roles, that you understand that there's, you know, benefit in having multi-professional input in anything that you do. So that's the focus. We just need enough kind of clinical detail that the panel can understand why this project was relevant, because we're going to ideally talk about some sort of project that you've done rather than a clinical scenario. We can come to that in a second. So I think really keep the clinical detail to a minimum. And I think that's a general kind of advice for the whole interview, really.

Yeah.

You don't need to hear about the clinical nitty-gritty. Some of the panel members are not going to be from your specialty anyway. Some of them won't be clinical. Some of them might even be lay members. They can't get into the ins and outs, and they're just likely to be worried about it if you get into it. So just keep it enough for context, But really focus on the other aspects.

Yeah, and also it's an interview for a substantive consultant job. They're not checking your clinical knowledge. You did your exams or whatever you've done to get signed off and get on the GMC register. So, it's very unlikely that it's going to be of benefit when you show how much you know about your specialty. And that's not likely what they're getting at with the question. They want to know how you'll be as a senior member of their team.

Absolutely. So I think often, you know, when we want to show a multidisciplinary team working example, you know, ideally pick one of your USPs that describes something that you've done where you, you know, developed a new service, a new pathway, an SOP, a guideline, or whatever it was, but where the input of the multidisciplinary team was Key. And then we need to show that you understand and value the benefit of having those different people. So how did you engage those relevant stakeholders? How can you demonstrate that you used their sort of individual and collective experience and wisdom? You know, why does it matter that you had all of these range of professionals on there rather than just you or a team of other consultants and people that think the same as you.

Yep. That's a great way to approach it. And so much stronger than talking about how you led a great resus. And as soon as you compare the two, because people's instinct is often to just talk about a time where, yeah, I was leading this resus call and there were all different specialties there and we all worked really well together and the patient was saved or whatever. And that is people's instinct when they think about working well in an MDT, but it's so much stronger. The example you gave, you get to do much more bigger picture, senior-led, senior-level thinking, and that is the role that you're going for. Um, so yeah, I think that's a much stronger way to approach it.

Clinical detail to a minimum, teamwork. Exactly.

There you go, you could get that on a t-shirt. What a slogan.

There we go. Yeah, we should get some t-shirts printed. Yeah, we should do that.

So next up, we're going to go look at the golden example, which is related to what we've just discussed. So do you want to take us through the example that we've got from one of our students this week?

Yes, so this is about a multidisciplinary team working example, and this is one of the 5 golden examples that we advise our students to prep. So this one is, an audit of our MRI reports found that we weren't consistently including key measurements against standards. None of our reports actually contained these key measurements. So I introduced a copy-paste spreadsheet tool to solve the problem. The team trialled it, we re-audited it 3 months later, and now All of our reports contain the right measurements, and we've discussed it at the MDT, and we've celebrated our results.

I'd love to know what celebrating the results look like. That sounds fun.

Oh, me too. Yeah.

Some poppers and party hats, probably. So I think it's a good project to use. It's an MDT project that definitely answers the question. But one of the key places I think where people go wrong, even once they've picked a good project, is that they spend the whole answer telling the story of the project. Like, this is what we did, then we did this, we audited this number of people, we found this, and then I did that. And that is a way to explain the project, but it doesn't necessarily answer the question, which is a time you worked well in an MDT. And so a good way is to pull out 3 themes of how the MDT worked well in this project and why and what you did to make that happen. Like, you all had a shared vision, and then spend a minute talking about how you created a shared vision within that team that led to the project being successful. And so, if you can theme it around these MDT, 3 ways that MDT worked well, it's much stronger than just telling the story from start to finish.

Yeah, I think that's really key. So, we need to know in this context, who the MDT is.

Yeah.

Who are these people? So, you know, presumably, you know, this is a radiologist, so, you know, so presumably you had some radiographers involved. You might have had IT involved, you might have had, you know, some nursing staff involved, that, you know, whoever else was involved to make this project work, we need to know who they are, how they were involved, and how you used their particular experience and expertise to make this project work for all of you. So it needs to really sound like a team effort. Often when people describe the projects, and we kind of force people to say, you know, to use I instead of we a lot. So one of the things that you're potentially risking here is that you're talking a lot about—

Yeah.

I did this, I did that, I did the other thing. You've got to remember In this particular example, that this is about teamwork and valuing all the various different disciplines. So that must come through loud and clear, as well as the actual impact of the project.

Agree. And also, this is a very common question to come up, so you should just prepare it. It's likely to come up. Yeah. And it's a good question. I think it's a good question because you want to hear about how they work with other people and what they're going to choose as an example of that. So I do, I do think it's a good question and you should definitely get it ready.

Yeah, I was just thinking actually last week we were talking about flexing your examples and using, you know, using them in different ways. This is a really good example of that because clearly this is an example of multidisciplinary team working. It's also an example of change management. So, you know, if you needed a time when you introduced a change You've also got this. There's probably some audit in here as well. So there's various different aspects that you can pull out depending on how—

Yeah, so this should be one of your USPs that you're using to pull out the themes of MDT working. You can use it to pull out themes of change, whatever theme. There's probably conflicts that came up. So there's lots of themes that you can pull out of each USP. And yeah, this is a common way that gets asked, but change is also a fairly common question. What are the challenges of making change? Or time you made the change. Um, so yeah, you could definitely flex it for that. Next up is an actual interview question that someone's been asked, and the question is, how do you build and maintain relationships with your primary care colleagues? Uh, I like this question. I, I think it's not always— it's obviously going to be whether it's relevant to your specialty or not, but a question about relationship building I think is reasonably common and a very good question. And so it could come up in relation to whatever is relevant to your job, whoever you would be building good relationships with. What do you think about this question?

Yeah, I like it. Yeah, I agree, it's pretty common. And I think particularly when there's a lot of focus on NHS 10-year plan and care closer to home, prevention, etc. this kind of working relationships across primary and secondary care kind of theme is pretty common. So I, and I think it gives you a real opportunity to show some of the stuff that you've done. So, you know, if you've got a USP that involves, you know, a pathway that extends from primary into secondary or tertiary care, that would work. If you've done something around, you know, some teaching or education things with our primary care colleagues, then you could showcase that too. And I, you know, I think also even just things like improving referral pathways for patients is something that you could mention here. So I think it, you know, it's a chance for you to showcase Some of the work that you've done or that you're doing or that you'd like to implement, as well as making some general points about building and maintaining relationships.

I think that building and maintaining relationships says something about how you interact with other teams that you will work with and how you look on these relationships. I think it gives you a chance to really showcase yourself as a senior member of the team. Because this is the things that you probably don't need to bother about so much when you're a junior member of the team, because it's not like the bigger picture thing isn't that relevant to you. Whereas on the senior team, these are the things that can make the service a success or cause a real headache for everyone if you don't have good working relationships. So yeah, I think it's a very nice question. And yeah, if you've got an example, that's good. You want to show that you know why it's important. Um, and yeah, I mean, imagine if you've done a pathway with your primary care colleagues, this question is going to be a gift. You're going to be so happy, uh, and you should definitely use it. I guess most people may not have done— literally developed a pathway, but will still— they may have seen one, they may know one that works well. Anything that brings in your experience of this, I think, would help.

And remember, this is a really nice opportunity as well to show that you've got an understanding of system and process that affects our, you know, our patient's journey and the way that our team works across, you know, across the whole patch. And so, I, you know, don't forget that you can use this as a way to demonstrate you can show senior-level thinking as well. Yeah, if you approach this in the right way, this is a real good question.

Okay, and then last up, we've got our tip and trick of the week. This is one of our favourite things to talk to students about, isn't it? Or maybe one of our most common things to talk to students about, which is how not to let a setback derail your interview prep. And we see lots of different ways this happens to people in the run-up to their interview, don't we?

Oh, it's— yeah, it's awful. Because, you know, the road to interview and getting your dream job is sometimes a bit bumpy. That's an understatement. And there's— yeah, sometimes it's just an absolute nightmare. But I— and I think there are multiple things that can set you back. So, you know, it might be a previous unsuccessful interview, it might be, you know, an informal visit that didn't go according to plan, you know, finding out something about your dream job that kind of throws you into a bit of a quandary about whether it is actually your dream job.

Or finding out who else is applying is another thing that can really—

Oh, that's awful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think you've got to remember that this is, this is your prep. You've got control over this, um, and what— whatever else is going on in the background for other people, all the rest of it, you can still, um, you know, commit to doing whatever you've committed to. 15 minutes a day. I'm going to answer one question a day. And actually, what we see is that the students who practise consistently and who just do it are the ones that walk into the interview feeling the most confident and are most likely to get the job. And that's just the way it is.

And I think this is one of the most important things that we speak to our students about in the run-up to their interview because It changes the— if you can get a handle on this, you can turn things around really quickly for yourself. It's the difference between telling yourself, oh, this is— it's not going to happen. They don't want to give me the job, or so-and-so is much better, or that when I went to the pre-interview meeting, I don't think they were giving me good vibes. And then you can totally self-sabotage whether any of that's true. And it may be true that you were perceiving it correctly, or it may not be. It doesn't really matter whatever else is going on, whoever else is applying or whatever they said to you. You cannot let, or you shouldn't let that derail your prep and your confidence. And it's so easy just to be like, right, this isn't going to happen. I can't face it. I can't deal with prepping. It's not, you know, and then you get yourself into a spiral where you just talk yourself out of the interview. And that bears no relation to your knowledge, your experience, or anything you've done before. You can just totally self-sabotage. But equally, you can turn it around very quickly by just being like, okay, I get it, this— I need to push all of these thoughts aside, all of the things I can't control, um, and just focus on what I can control, which is just knuckling down, prepping, being focused, building my own confidence. And that, yeah, just makes such a difference when people go in feeling confident and good, um, versus— Telling themselves that they're gonna mess up.

We often see this, you know, people have a setback of, you know, or multiple setbacks, 'cause, you know, life. And they say, oh, as soon as this bit's, as soon as this is done, I'm gonna do my prep. As soon as this holiday's over, as soon as the kids have gone back to school, as soon as I've finished this week on call, as soon as this, as soon as that. Honestly, I know it sounds so obvious, but people don't do it. Just do it now. Just spend 5 minutes today recording an answer and seeing how it sounds, because that's so much better. You know, even if you record it from your car just before you go into work.

We get a lot of that, don't we?

Or voice note yourself on the way from the tube. Yeah, I mean, we've listened to multiple, you know, different scenarios where people have posted their videos from. And all of them work in terms of prep. So, I think what we're saying is—

Just do it. Don't talk yourself out of it. The mindset bit is really important, and things happen in the run-up to your interview. Lots of unexpected things will happen, and your job is to just stay focused on prepping, on showing them your best self, and on going into the interview feeling good, feeling confident, and that these things in themselves will make a massive difference to your performance. That's the pep talk from Becky and Tessa from today.

Yeah, I think we've probably—

Made the point.

Made ourselves quite clear.

Well, let's wrap up there on that note. Uh, thank you for another great episode, and I will see you next time.