EP 53: Why Your Complaint Answer Might Be Throwing You Under the Bus

The best mistake examples are the things that could have happened to anyone. If you're talking about a crisis, you've picked the wrong thing.

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 what to do if your mistake example doesn't feel serious enough. We break down a golden example about a missed blood test that turned into 3 layers of learning, and we give you some advice on how to find a prep partner and what to do with them. Let's get stuck in. First up, we've got a question of the week, which is a question from one of our Academy students. And the question we have this week is, what if I don't have a mistake example that feels serious enough? What do you reckon to this?

So, I think this is actually what we want. We don't want it to feel too serious because we don't want the panel to be sitting there when you tell them this example thinking, oh my God, you know, how on earth did that actually happen? And, you know, now they're distracted by thinking, seriously though, how did you do that?

If you hear a sharp intake of breath when you tell your example, you know it's too bad.

Yeah, exactly. If they look a bit pale, then you've gone wrong. So really, we want this to be an example of something that basically could have happened to anyone. We, you know, we want the panel to be sitting there thinking, Yeah, no, that's unfortunate, but I can see how that happened. Or even, yeah, that's happened to me, or I know somebody that's happened to. And, you know, there needs to have been some sort of consequence for the patient, or, you know, or other people, depending on what the mistake is that you're delivering. But it needs to have been something that you were then able to rectify fairly easily. You can show some learning from it and we can all move on. If duty of candour was required, this is not the example for this question.

It's not? Why not?

We don't want a duty of candour example here because that is, you know, that is where significant harm has been caused, where harm has been caused, and So, actually, that is a whole statutory process that's required in significant circumstances. So, this is not the situation here. Certainly, an apology and an explanation, it should have happened by you in the moment, but nothing more than that.

Because if it's too much more than that and involves formal channels, it's too big to be using as your mistake. And we use, in the academy, we use the filter, which is the how the hell did that happen bin, which is where you chuck all of your examples where anyone listening to it would just be thinking, how the hell did Becky get into that situation? And so, if you've got a very serious mistake, it's escalated, it's gone to court, you've got whatever, some sort of major formal thing, it should be in the how the hell did that happen bin. Which is, you know, everyone's got stories like that. It's not that these things don't happen, but it's that you don't— you can choose what you share in your interview, and you want to choose carefully because what you're doing is trying to get them to give you a job. And so it's not— you're not trying to give a warts-and-all view of yourself. You're trying to give the best version of yourself. So avoid a very serious mistake, and you're trying to pick something that's much more relatable and everyday.

We're looking for a bit of vulnerability and a bit of personal insight and reflection, but we don't want to be throwing ourselves under the bus in an interview.

It's your interview for a job. You want them to want you. Okay, and that kind of leads into our golden example of the week, which is one of the examples that a student has given us. So do you want to take us through this example and we can chat about it?

Yeah, so the example is, you know, tell me about a time you made a mistake. So I saw a patient with chest pain on the cardiology day unit. I took a history and requested bloods, but then I realised that I'd forgotten to request a lipid profile, and that was needed before starting statins. I went back to the patient, apologised, explained why it mattered. It caused a bit of a delay, but no actual harm. And then I reflected on it, and I've learned about screening for risk factors, and I've delivered some teaching on this topic. And I've built it into some referral criteria as well.

I think it's a bit of a non-event, which I know contradicts or seems to contradict what we've said, just said, about not choosing a massive event. And I think you need to find a balance between not an event that should be in the how the hell did that happen bin, but also not, uh, not an event, a mistake where the panel will just be like, what, like that was no big deal. They're not really choosing a Proper mistake. And so, yeah, I think forgetting to request a lipid profile on, uh, what I assumed to be an adult patient is probably not that big a deal. Like, it seems like they— you just went back to the patient and said, forgot to take some bloods, can I take some more? And they said yes, and then you took more. So it's not— it's just a bit of a non-event. And so you don't really get to show the senior level element of it. So, any mistake, it need— there needs to be a consequence to someone. So, there could be situations where this, forgetting a blood test, could be a significant mistake, right? But I'm not sure this is it.

Yeah, I mean, I think, I suppose, you know, forgetting a blood test in paediatrics is generally probably worse, you know, having to bleed a screaming 2-year-old again. It's not anyone's idea of a fun time. I mean, you know, maybe if this was an adult patient who had a significant needle phobia, or they'd already left the hospital and they've got a 3-hour journey each way, you know, then they're significantly cheesed off about the whole thing. And, you know, now there's more of a consequence. And so it— maybe it sort of matters a bit more.

Yeah.

I, yeah, I think there just needs to be this balance between, you know, it can't, it can't be so significant that people are like, oh, um, but it also can't be a bit of a non-event. And I worry that—

I think when people get told in their interview feedback that they didn't choose a significant enough example, it's not necessarily that it was the wrong example to pick, but it's the way they're failing to demonstrate the impact. And so, this is kind of played down in the telling, which is, it wasn't a big deal, it was fine, we did the bloods. In which case, you're not sharing anything meaningful for your interview. So, if you're choosing a more minor example, you need to emphasize what the impact was. And there has to be— you don't want a significant impact, but something needs to have happened or someone needs to have cared, otherwise— It's just a non-event. So I think in its current form, this isn't— I think this is going to be hard to show impact of. But if in another version of this story where the patient is particularly upset or particularly far away or particularly needle-phobic, like you say, or particularly difficult to bleed, then it could be— it could be a good mistake. This is why it's one of the golden examples. It takes time to find a good mistake example. But that's why it's worth doing it before your interview, before the moment, because once you get a good one, you just need one, that's fine. But the first thing that comes to mind is unlikely to be the right one, so it's worth just spending some time working it out before your interview.

I think there's nuance here, which is why it's quite difficult to navigate. I think it's probably worth just running it past a couple of your colleagues. of around the same level and just check that they don't go, oh dear, how did that happen? That sounds awful. In which case, that's in the how the hell did that happen bin. But equally, if they're just a bit like, yeah, okay, then that's probably not the example either. But as you say, this is why it's worth preparing it, because you don't want to just randomly pick something out of the air in that moment. Because if you do that, it is likely to be the worst mistake you've ever made. We don't want to share that in our interview, do we? That's not for sharing.

Okay, so let's go on to our interview question of the week. This is a question that has been asked to someone recently in an interview. Uh, the question this week is, how would you handle receiving a verbal complaint from a patient or a relative? What do you reckon to this?

I, I like this question. Um, I think it, it enables you to give a few layers to your answer. You can Talk, you know, you can talk about, you know, you show some nice communication skills, a bit of conflict de-escalation. You can also demonstrate a bit of an understanding of the complaints process and how things need to be handled, and that gives you the ability to demonstrate senior-level thinking as well. Yeah, I quite like it. I think it's quite a nice question where you could come out pretty well.

And it kind of connects This is something that we talked about in the previous episode, which is when you get a hypothetical question, you can give a bit of context to show your experience. However, because that's what I would say is when you get a, how would you handle a particular, or how would you deal with a particular thing? You give a bit of context of your experience because it gives them the background of where the rest of the answer's coming from. However, there is also a thing that we try to impress upon our students, which is Don't throw yourself under the bus if you don't need to. So if unless they directly ask you for a negative about yourself, don't give them it. And if they ask you for one negative, you don't need to give them three. You give them the one and three ways you address it. And so this question, I think, lends itself to you going off on a throwing yourself under the bus line because you think about a time you received a verbal complaint. Um, personally, and then you can go off on that. Whereas they're not asking you about a complaint about you, they're asking about how to handle— how you would handle a complaint in general, potentially. And so just be mindful, like we keep emphasizing, this is your job interview. You want them to give you a job, so don't like go down a route that makes you look bad when they're not asking you to do that.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. This is, you know, this is where it's really important to actually listen to the question because they didn't ask you how would you handle it, a verbal complaint about yourself. They asked how would you handle a verbal complaint. So it could be, you know, it could be something as simple as, you know, for us, some, you know, parent comes in from the waiting room and says, I've been waiting 3 hours, you know, I'm, you know, I want to complain about it. So there's that, you know, or, you know, if you're a you know, in another specialty, somebody comes up to you on the ward and says, you know, my relative hasn't had their antibiotics on time or hasn't been given anything to eat and drink for the last 3 hours. You know, how do you de-escalate that? So yeah, it's not really quite about you, it's just a complaint. So then it's just again, you know, about all of the stuff that you would do, but just walking them through the steps, you know. So I'm going to first of all say, you know, I'm sorry, I'm going to apologise and acknowledge, I'm going to show a bit of empathy, um, and then I'm going to take a minute to de-escalate whatever needs to be de-escalated. Then I'm going to look into it, I'm going to try to resolve it in the moment. This is a verbal complaint, so what, what we're trying to do is de-escalate it now, resolve it locally, um, because that's that part of the complaint process, so that it doesn't then have to move into a more formal complaints process and get PALS involved and get, you know, written feedback and all the rest of it.

Yeah.

of it. Um, show that you understand the communication side of it, being a nice normal human side of it. Um, and that part of it.

Yeah, so it's actually a good question really, because it quite gives you a chance to show some senior level experience, some reflection. We know you love reflection, so you can get that in there as well. It's got everything you need in one question. So yeah, it's a good question. I like it. Now we're going to go on to our tip and trick of the week. What is our tip and trick this week?

I really like this one. So the tip is find yourself a partner to prepare with. This makes a massive, massive difference, and it could be anyone. So one of our students at the moment, her prep— one of her prep partners—

I was just thinking about that as well. It's so good, isn't it?

I love this. It's so good. So her daughter reads off a random question and then videos the student answering the question, and her daughter will not let her look at the answers.

And also encourages her to pause.

If her timing's getting a bit long. Yeah, she encourages her to pause. And I learnt she's also doing a little bit of an eyebrow raise if the question's running a bit long. So, great prep partner. Yeah, we love this.

What other good partnership arrangements have you handled? Well, I think part of it is about just having accountability to someone for prepping. So often our students, we pair them up with people who are often prepping to a similar timeframe. And so what's good about that is, first off, you're connected with someone that you would not otherwise come across who's not in your specialty. I think one thing is people find Because it's so competitive, and they might be—they might know other people applying, or you know—they might not be able to talk openly about it to people in their team for different reasons. So it can actually be quite hard to find the right person to prep with. So it is good, like if you've got a family member, or you know you're paired with someone who is totally unrelated, then that's—that is—I think can be a good match. So sometimes, if it's someone who's got an interview in the same time frame, there also be. preparing and ramping up their prep. And what you're trying to do is not necessarily that they're an expert in your interview answers, because they're not on your panel, and they're very unlikely to be an experienced consultant interview panel member, and this person's daughter is not. But there are some things that they can be really helpful with, which is keeping your timing right, the things that you forget, like pausing before just rushing in, but also just keeping you—

Focused.

Practicing regularly so that you have someone that you say, right, well, we're going to meet up today. We're going to do 20 minutes of practice. We're going to do the same in 2 days. And that just means that you keep the momentum going. So I think having a prep partner is good to get the reps in, to make you accountable, and also to notice the common things that you're struggling with in your interviews. Even if they don't have the knowledge of the interview answers, just the general structure of things, I think, can be really helpful too.

Even if you just make an agreement with somebody, I'm going to send you a video of my— of a question that I've recorded once a day. I'm actually thinking back to when we did this for each other. Um, but you know, I'm gonna— today I'm gonna send you a video answer. You know, the other person doesn't even need to critique it, but the fact that you've done it means that you've done that 5 minutes of practice. So I, I think it, it is around the accountability for me almost more than any other It also made sense.

I remember when we were doing it, and actually we had that feeling of the first one being like, oh, I don't want to do it. And so I, you know, it's very, a very relatable feeling. But then actually once we started doing it, it was fine. And then yeah, we didn't— you don't care as much because you just get more used to doing it and you get more confident. So yeah, definitely that experience of just getting going, um, will really help you. And a prep partner can make sure They don't let you slack and you keep going.

You can even have a bit of fun with it if you're doing it with somebody else as well. So, I think it just makes the whole thing a bit less painful. It gets the job done.

Great. Okay, uh, I think we will wrap up the episode there. Thank you very much, Becky, as always. I will see you next time.