School Student
What's surgery like?
Preparing for a consultant post
Having obtained specialist registration, you are now eligible to apply for consultant posts. Before you do this, you might want to consider undertaking a fellowship that will allow you to gain additional specialty knowledge and further prepare you for consultant roles. A number of these kind of posts exist at various hospitals around the country, and should be advertised in the standard manner.
It is possible that your clinical training and experience has not provided you with the non-technical skills you will need as a consultant. For example, you will need to manage your own time and workload effectively, and that of the team for whom you are responsible - thus you will need defined leadership and management skills. If you feel that you lack these skills, or that they could be improved, there are a number of courses you can attend, or you seek out extra responsibilities within your current role.
You will also be responsible for managing and running clinics, theatre lists, and will no doubt be involved in clinical governance and risk management activities, as well as measuring and reporting on clinical outcomes. You may also have input into service redesign and modernisation.
As a consultant, you will be involved in training. You will need to be familiar with the curriculum and the associated assessment tools. Your local deanery may provide support for you to develop your teaching role, and there are a number of courses for this run by the College.
In addition, you may be able to embark on collecting advice and information from senior colleagues perhaps by gaining experience of chairing meetings or designing and running rotas. Similar courses are run by a variety of providers. You may find some of these useful:
