I spoke to a GP trainee, Dr Raykal Sim, who worked for a Big 4 Consulting Firm. We spoke about what it is like to work as a management consultant in healthcare projects.

Her journey:

  • Completed a regional leadership fellowship in Yorkshire called the Future Leaders Program. During the regional program, she worked with NHS England on projects to help international medical graduate doctors transition into the NHS.
  • She then got onto the National Medical Directors Fellowship scheme, which is for doctors in training after F2. (AHPs and Dentists also have their their own schemes that they can apply to)
  • After the fellowship, she stayed on as a clinical associate alongside practising clinically.

💡The Yorkshire Future Leaders Program is the only regional leadership program that grants a complete year out for leadership development for doctors in training. (Otherwise known as an Out of Program Experience, OOPE)

🤔 What is Medical Management Consulting?

Management consulting is incredibly varied depending on your role and where you work. For healthcare projects, clinicians bring their clinical knowledge and experience to solve complex business problems for healthcare organisations. Companies seek doctors for their frontline expertise and evidence-backed strategies that can help solve specific problems.

Example Problems:

  • Reducing hospital acquired infections
  • Digital transformation (Implementing new technology)
  • Strategic decisions for development of pharmaceutical drugs
  • Patient Experience Improvement

The good news is that management consultants don’t need to have business backgrounds! Your medical training has already given you many transferable skills such as problem-solving, working under pressure and communication. This article will help you harness these skills to get into consulting.

👌 What the Role involves

Consulting is about solving problems and providing guidance for the client, not too dissimilar to managing patients and their presentations. The final tangible output is often a slide deck that documents the “before and after” and the “workings”. The non tangible benefits of the work can often be difficult to measure. A key difference between being a doctor and a consultant is the approach to problems:

  • As a doctor, expertise is stated to the patient and you find yourself working on an individual level.
  • In consulting, it is more of a coaching approach, working collaboratively with clients and working with a systems and teams based approach.

❓ Why Do Medics Move to Consulting

People move for a multitude of reasons but could be categorised into “push factors” from the NHS and “pull factors” toward consulting:

  • Flexibility: While hours can be long, consultants have more autonomy over annual and study leave and can look towards more diverse career paths.
  • Intellectual Breadth: The ability to work with diverse people from different backgrounds rather than just talking about “medicine.” You have the opportunity to work as a sort of ‘translator’ between different groups of professionals.
  • Impact: Moving from individual patient care to high-level systemic impact.

“When you’re on the ground….it can feel like there are problems that you can’t fix on your own. [In Consulting] you are interacting with the boards of the hospital, the CEO, all the execs, and working with everyone in the organisation. It feels like you have the opportunity to pull the levers to make change happen. You get to bring change and improvements in weeks and months that some might not be able to do their entire careers!”

🗓️ A Day in the Life

One of the draws to management consulting is that no day is ever the same. The work is very fast-paced and you tend to spend varying amounts of time (weeks or months) working on a specific project and then moving on to another, similar to rotational medical training placements.

“It really varies. I would say it’s never usually a 9 to 5 working day especially where there’s two modes that you’re in. You’re either on the project or you’re on the bench. And when you’re on the bench, you’re doing other stuff that contributes to building the business. When you’re working, it is completely dependent on the client’s hours and needs.

Different firms and teams will have different ways of working and working cultures.

In the public sector, you may mainly stick Monday to Friday. But in the private sector, when the deadlines are due, you just need to deliver. There are different cultures and different organisations as well. The Big Four may expect or need a certain pace that you work with compared to boutique consultancies. It really depends on the scope and timeline of the project,team dynamics and client needs. No two days are the same and the pace of the project scope really determines how you and your team work.”

🚦 How to get started – The Three Pillars

You don’t need a business degree, but there are certain things you can do to help with your application.

1. Develop business awareness:

Consultants analyse complex problems to advise senior stakeholders. A lot of the work they do relates to finance. You need to understand the business context of healthcare, not just the clinical side.

  • Read Health Service Journal (HSJ) and Financial Times healthcare section regularly.
  • Follow healthcare consulting firms on LinkedIn (McKinsey Health, BCG Healthcare, Bain & Company, Oliver Wyman).
  • Read firm publications
  • Understand basic business concepts: revenue, profit margins, market share, ROI
    • There are loads of free resources out there → even GCSE/ A-Level business can be a good place to start
    • Consider free introductory Coursera/edX courses (e.g., an “Introduction to Finance” or “introduction to data analysis” course)
    • Read ‘Running Lean’ by Ash Maurya to understand basic business models, lean canvas creation and more.

2. Strategic “System-Level” Projects

Consulting firms will want you to demonstrate impact and the ability to navigate organisational complexity. Your experience should show you can think beyond the patient level and at the system level.

  • Lead audits that examine system-wide issues like resource allocation or patient access and participate in Quality Improvement (QI) projects that have business metrics (cost savings, efficiency gains, patient throughput)
    • Choose projects that have measurable business/efficiency metrics.
    • Don’t just audit clinical compliance; audit the cost of non-compliance, the time saving of a new process or the patient throughput improvement.
    • For instance, an audit of theatre turnaround time should include the lost revenue from cancelled operations.
  • Volunteer for hospital strategy committees or transformation projects

3. Build your analytical skillset:

The ability to break down a large, complex problem into smaller, manageable and solvable components is very important and knowing the following can really help with this:

  • Become proficient in Excel
    • Focus on:
      • Conditional formatting
        • automatically apply formatting (like colours, icons, or data bars) to cells based on their values or the values of other cells.
      • Nested IF statements
        • allows multiple conditions to be evaluated within a single statement
      • Goal seek
        • allows you to find an input value needed to achieve a desired result from a formula. It works by “reverse-engineering” a calculation
      • Creating dynamic charts/dashboards.
      • LinkedIn Learning or dedicated Excel courses, Udemy or even youtube are great places to start.
  • Learn how to utilise PowerPoint for clear, executive-level presentations
    • Learn the ‘MECE‘ (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) structure for slide design. Practice explaining data with a single, clear takeaway headline per slide.
  • Consider learning a foundational coding language like Python as this is a growing requirement in advanced analytics roles.

“See if you can shadow CEOs, COOs in hospitals that you guys are students at. At your university’s hospital you get a hospital email and login so you should be able to find the CEO’s email. Just write and say – I’m interested in healthcare management, I’m medical student, please can I shadow you for a couple of days.”

Other Ideas

  • Join relevant societies:
    • Healthcare Management Society at your medical school
    • Join the BMA and attend policy discussions
    • Student sections of management consulting societies if available
  • Develop your consulting voice:
    • Write for Student BMJ, medical school publications, or healthcare blogs
    • Focus on writing about healthcare systems, not just clinical medicine
  • Network early:
    • Attend healthcare consulting firm events and information sessions
    • Connect with doctors who’ve moved into consulting on LinkedIn
    • Attend NHS Confederation Expo or similar healthcare management conferences

“Get involved with public health stuff as well because public health is probably the closest to consulting. Attend national conferences and find out who the leaders are. Go up to them and express your interest. Express that you’re curious and ask. Even if they don’t give you an opportunity just ask – do you know someone who I could speak to that would be able to point me in the direction of an opportunity?”

🏛️ Relevant Internships/ Courses

To stand out, it is good to demonstrate proactivity beyond the standard curriculum. Whether through formal programs or self-sourced shadowing opportunities, these experiences give you real world experience and a chance to build a network of mentors who have successfully navigated the same non-traditional career path.

Medical Electives

“See if you can arrange your elective with a consulting firm. Not just big four but boutique consulting firms. There are consulting firms that are completely clinician led. For example, there’s one called 33N.“

Internships

  • Candesic
    • Management consulting firm based in London that specialises in healthcare, pharma, life sciences and medtech.
    • They offer a 1-2 month internship during the summer holiday.
  • Carnall Farrar (now known as CF)
    • Prominent UK-based boutique consultancy and data company specialising in the healthcare and life sciences sectors.
    • They work with NHS, private sector, and life sciences clients to improve healthcare delivery, data usage, and strategy.
  • Costello medical
    • Global Health Internship that aims to provide a long-term solution to the need for evidence-based health policies and treatments in low-or middle-income countries.

Business & Leadership Courses

  • NHS Leadership Academy Programmes
    • Free, online programmes for developing leadership skills and networking.
    • The Edward Jenner Programme is excellent for early-career doctors.
  • LSE Summer School – Health Economics & Policy
    • This is a 6-week online course (6-9 hours/week) that explores healthcare challenges, health economics, and policy design.
    • This provides an excellent foundation for healthcare consulting.
  • Healthcare Leadership Academy (HLA)
  • Develops leadership skills for healthcare professionals through structured programmes, workshops, and mentorship focused on management, innovation, and system improvement in healthcare settings.

Intercalations/ Postgraduate Degrees

Not necessary but can be advantageous:

  • iBSc/MSc Healthcare Management
  • MSc Healthcare Management
  • MBA (though typically done post-qualification)
  • MSc Health Economics
  • MSc Global Health with management focus

📌Eligibility and requirements

  • Most firms will hire doctors at two main entry points:
    • Junior Associate/Business Analyst: For those joining straight after medical school or F1/F2.
    • Associate/Consultant: For those with 3+ years of clinical experience or a specialised PhD/MBA.
  • Academic Excellence: While “medicine is enough,” they will still look for high performance in your medical degree and A-Levels.

💻 Application Process

The process is rigorous and requires specific “corporate” translation of medical skills.

  • CV – Needs to be one page, concise, and impact-oriented (using numbers/percentages).

  • Tests – McKinsey is known to use a gamified assessment process, BCG uses maths tests, Bain uses UKCAT-style tests.

  • Interviews – Includes Fit Interviews (emotional intelligence/leadership) and Case Interviews (structured problem-solving).

🕰️ Progression

Many people are expected to be promoted every 2–3 years.

  1. Associate (Year 1-2): Doing the “grunt work” – data analysis, research, and slide building.
  2. Engagement Manager (Year 3-5): Managing the daily relationship with the client and leading a small team of associates.
  3. Associate Partner/Principal: Focusing on selling projects and deepening industry expertise.
  4. Partner: An owner of the firm. Focuses on high-level strategy and bringing in new business.

💰Salary

  • Starting Salary: Usually ranges from £50,000 to £90,000 for entry-level doctor roles, depending on the firm.
  • Bonuses: Performance-based bonuses are common.
  • Benefits: Private healthcare, enhanced pensions, and “perks” like gym memberships or travel points.

⚖️ Work life balance

  • Expect 50–70 hour weeks during intense project phases.
  • Depending on the client, you may be “on-site” in a different city during the week.
  • Unlike medicine, there are no “night shifts,” but deadlines are hard and fast. When a project is “live,” your time is not your own.

 

✅ Advantages vs. ❌ Drawbacks

✅Advantages ❌Drawbacks
Rapid Career Growth Loss of Identity
Become Business Savvy High Pressure
Remote Flexibility No Patient Contact
Dynamic career pathways May Lack career stability

Consulting in the NHS Context

Separate from traditional commercial consulting, the NHS has developed its own ecosystem of consulting and advisory functions. Instead of being a completely external service, NHS consulting has three different layers:

Internal strategy and transformation teams

  • These form the backbone of NHS consulting capacity and includes:
    • Integrated Care Boards
    • NHS England’s transformation units
    • Trust-level strategic development teams

These teams are useful as they have deep institutional knowledge but also lack the external perspective that fresh eyes can provide.

External management consultancies

  • This is where the firms mentioned above come in
  • They play a significant role and often secure contracts for large-scale transformation projects.
  • The NHS has faced criticism for spending on external consultants but many argue these firms bring specialised expertise and capacity during critical periods of change.
  • Boutique healthcare consultancies offer more targeted, sector-specific services.

Clinical leadership and improvement roles

These blur the line between consulting and healthcare delivery. Some clinicians have positions in organisations such as:

  • Academic Health Science Networks
  • NICE
  • Roles as Clinical Entrepreneurs

These create pathways for clinicians to engage in system-wide improvement work while maintaining connection to frontline care.

Hybrid Clinical-Consulting Roles in the NHS

Many doctors are able to combine clinical work with leadership and advisory roles. This is through things like:

  • Portfolio Careers
    • Many doctors build a diverse work profile that includes advising health-tech startups, sitting on national committees, or conducting health systems research alongside their NHS roles.
  • Leadership Positions
    • Formal roles, such as Clinical or Medical Directors, integrate management and resource allocation with active medical practice.

👍 Is it right for you?

Ask yourself: Do I enjoy the “puzzle” of the hospital system more than the “puzzle” of the individual patient? If you find yourself complaining about “the way things are run” more than you enjoy clinical medicine, consulting is your calling.

Conclusion

Transitioning from the wards to a boardroom isn’t about “leaving medicine behind” – it’s about scaling your impact. The consulting path is a steep climb that rewards curiosity, data-driven logic, and a “system-first” mindset. By refining your CV and seeking out strategic internships now, you are gaining the tools to fix the very systems you work within.

 

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Reviewed by Dr. Raykal Sim

Dr Raykal Sim is a GP Registrar with experience spanning the public sector, private healthcare consulting, and startups, she brings a unique perspective to healthcare strategy and innovation.