I'm after a bit of advice about a possible career change. I'm a 34 year old doctor with 9 years healthcare experience. I have excellent academics and have had good career progression so far. I expect to become a (medical) consultant next year and have worked at this level during a period abroad. I'm keen for a career change as I find working for the NHS deeply unsatisfying. However nearly all my skills are people based and I have no commercial experience. You may mock, but I had thought about HR consulting. Would I even be considered for a post with a consulting firm? Any advice gratefully received, especially from those with experience in recruiting.

If you think the NHS is unsatisfying, wait until you work as a corporate drone for Megacorp Consulting Inc.Why not set up your own private practice? Or maybe go into industry as an expert in a particular field of healthcare?If you're really set on consulting, I'm sure you'd be snapped up very quickly by anyone who has a healthcare practice. A consulting team with an experienced medical doctor on-board, pitching for an assignment in the healthcare sector? Golddust - they won't be able to stick your CV into their proposal fast enough.

Maybe you're right, I just can't help thinking that the grass is greener on the other side of those glossy plate glass office windows -after all I doubt people often threaten to throw things at you in an ordinary day's work. These things do add piquancy to the daily grind. The industry expert idea is a good one, any ideas about how to research that further?

I can completely sympathise with your frustrations with the NHS, and am sure you can have a very rewarding and varied career in consulting, though be warned that many of the frustrations practising doctors like you face in the NHS (ie bureucratic management, limitations on being able to prescribe the most appropraite drugs, if they arent under collaborative purchasing arrangements, rushed un-thought-through political changes, league tables) are ultimately all brought about and implemented by Private Sector managament consultants. The MTAS system nightmare for interviewing Senior House Officers that has led to bottlenecks of high quality doctors without jobs, was i beleive thought through by PA Consulting, the Systems integration mess was Accenture, the GP pay error (too much being paid to some was a formula devised by a MBBB) and many more botched errors (too many to mention) come from the likes of Deloittes, Cap Gemini, KPMG and E&Y My advice would be to use your weight as a clinical expert and apply to all of these firms, indeed stressing the value of your networks in Local Health Authorities and Trusts, your medical expertise, and invlauable clinicians perrpective to get your foot in the door. Thereafter though i would AVOID like the plague any NHS related client work, and focus instead on the pharmaceuticals and manufacturing arms of healthcare suppliers, broadening into other areas of manufacturing, retail or defence as you see fit. Good luck

Thanks for this feedback, the suggestion of avoiding NHS related work is particularly appealing!

Maybe you're right, I just can't help thinking that the grass is greener on the other side of those glossy plate glass office windows -after all I doubt people often threaten to throw things at you in an ordinary day's work. These things do add piquancy to the daily grind. The industry expert idea is a good one, any ideas about how to research that further?

There ain't no glamour in them there glass window offices. Just endless piles of thankless work. I'd rather have a patient trying to bite me than a pointy-haired boss trying to play me off against his favourites, anyday. And I ain't kidding. Keepin' it real ~SVP.

You may think the grass is greener, but the complete lack of ethics in the private sector (especially compared to medicine) will be like Roundup on your dreams.

Can I just say that is the best post I have seen on here for a while and is absolutely spot on. Thank you. Or, rather, thank you to the poster.

Thanks for everyone's thoughts. They've made me reconsider what I'm really after in a career move, which is the ability to operate at a more strategic level, so I'm not just affecting an individual but a system. From what I'm hearing the corporate world may be a place where dreams of changing things go to die! (correct me if I'm wrong) However it could just be the place I need to get experience to start my own venture- who knows?

Don't do it! There many consultancies that work on the CfH programme that would snap you up eg, BT, Hedra, Fujitsu and pay up to £100k but you would lose your autonomy, the work is not people based, there isn't the respect and you would be exposed to brutal capitalism.

And yet these same people who are giving you this advice are obviously nice enough people to be honest on this post - the irony is not lost on me here ( no disrespect to those people who have offered their words of advice to matilda so far). Matilda, I empathise completly. I too am a 26 year old healthcare professional (not a medical doc) and have become exasperaterd with the NHS too. Therefore I too am defecting to the consultancy world once I have completed my PhD. My advice to you would be: give it a shot. Yes the City may be a brutal capitalistic dog-eat-dog world but at the same time, there is room for 'nice' people I'm sure to be very successful at what they do. You've worked damn hard to get those letters after your name and no-one can take that away from you. So what do you have to lose by giving consultancy a go? So it doesnt work out...big deal. You go back to being a senior registrar (I assume thats what you are) and become a medical consultant in a couple of years.Put it this way, if you dont do it and you have itchy feet - you'll always be wondering 'what if...' Thats what it boils down to. Forget the state of the NHS (shambles though it is) or the lack of respect people have for the medical profession these days, if you are feeling disconcerted with what you are doing, move. You have the ability to move back to medicine whenever you want to...so what are you waiting for....?Best of luck

I left NHS management to join healthcare consulting and there are docs who do the same. I'd advise researching carefully what is involved in healthcare consulting before deciding whether it's for you or not. I've no doubt you'd be snapped up but you might find the entry level frustrating as coming from what would be classed as industry without the right managerial background means there will be a limit to the level you'd start at and you may find it frustrating having litle actual responsibility when you've had so much as a clinician. I'd also examine your moral stance. Aspects of the work focuses on efficiency savings and delivering managerial financial targets which can involve implementing tough decisions. Would you be happy to lead the closure or reduction in numbers of theatres, for example.All in all, the work is interesting if you get into service improvement work and reconfig of services etc. I see it as a way of driving the type of change you want to do more of as an NHs manager but can't because you're too caught up in delivering targets. But then there are good projects and bad, as always....

"The MTAS system nightmare for interviewing Senior House Officers that has led to bottlenecks of high quality doctors without jobs, was i beleive thought through by PA Consulting"This is completely untrue. PA Consulting didn't have involvement in the design or implementation of MTAS - the online recruitment process was actually designed through consultation between the Deaneries, The Royal Colleges and the BMA amongst others with the application software developed by a third party (again, not PA Consulting).PA Consulting was however engaged by the London Deanery / NHS London to design, implement and run a replacement recruitment process (with less than 2 weeks notice) that saw several thousand medics successfully placed in posts across London and tens of thousands of applications successfully processed with none of the impact on the service / safety that the doomsday merchants were so confidently predicting.