Specialist Advisor - General Internal Medicine Consultant Doctor

Job summary

Job title: Specialist Advisor – General Internal Medicine Consultant Doctor
Location: National
Daily rate: £300 (£268 day rate + £32 day holiday pay)
Ad-Hoc: As and when required
Closing Date: Thursday 26th February 2026 at 11.59pm

Essential Criteria: Successful candidates must be on the GMC specialist register as a speciality consultant in a medical specialty and currently in a substantive contract.

Desirable Criteria: Experience in Quality Improvement, Data Analysis, Leadership of services / divisions.

Are you committed to helping us regulate health and social care within England?
When thinking about what drives you every day in your job, what keeps you motivated and passionate about your work, what comes to mind? For 3000+ people at the CQC we end each day knowing that we have made a difference to the lives of those most in need in our communities.

We make sure health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate, equitable, high-quality care and encourage services to improve. We are looking for people who are caring, demonstrate integrity, aspire to excellence, committed to equitable and inclusive services and care and work well as part of a team to join with us and share in this sense of achievement. If you would like to help us make a positive impact to health and social care within England and deliver a service of excellence to the public then read on.

Why this could be a great role for you…
You will have an opportunity to contribute to ensuring that services and care provided to millions of people are safe compassionate and effective and led by senior leaders with the required skills and gain valuable insight into how organisations are assessed and be exposed to varying degrees of best practice.

Job description

What you will bring…

As the ideal candidate for this role, you will;

1. Be currently employed as a substantive consultant within a medical specialty. If you have additional experience in providing General Internal Medicine, please highlight this.
2. Have experience in interrogating clinical datasets including national clinical audits and quality improvement projects.
3. Have personal experience in quality improvement and change management.
4. Possess an up-to-date appraisal in your local organisation and completion of mandatory training, including equality diversity and inclusion training.
5. Demonstrate strong communication skills and evidence of collaborative / MDT working.

We are looking for experienced senior leaders currently working in Professional Practice who can bring their expertise in leadership, governance and strategy to rigorously assess organisational effectiveness at the highest level and provide specialist advice and input into the Care Quality Commission’s (CQCs) regulatory inspection and investigation activity. This advice ensures that CQC’s judgements are informed by up to date and credible clinical and professional knowledge and experience.

Please see below the specialism categories we are looking to recruit from;

• General Internal Medicine
• Acute Internal Medicine
• Cardiology
• Respiratory Medicine
• Gastroenterology
• Haematology
• Care of the Elderly
• Endocrinology
• Neurology
• Oncology
• Palliative Care
• Renal Medicine
• Hepatology

Person specification

Being a Specialist Advisor
This role can be undertaken as either a Casual Worker, paid directly to a personal bank account by the CQC for attending in your own time (non-working days, annual leave) or as a seconded position if your service is registered with the CQC and agrees to the secondment. Seconded SpAs' organisations agree in principle that their employees can attend CQC inspections and the seconded SpA seeks their line manager's permission to take leave to attend individual inspections, which can last from one to three days. The seconded SpA's organisation then invoices the CQC for the time the SpA spent away from their substantive role.

You will be offered opportunities to support inspection with minimum 6 weeks’ notice whenever possible, however, you will also be contacted for more short notice support on occasions. You are under no obligation to accept an inspection should it be offered and it not be convenient for you. We are not able to guarantee you a set number of inspection opportunities in a one year period. We recommend you undertake a minimum of two inspections a year.

If successful at interview we aim to conclude your pre-engagement checks within a 6-8 week window, please complete all forms and take actions to assist the team in achieving this. You will be provided with a dedicated onboarding peer who will support you in completing pre-engagement checks and will be on hand to answer any questions you have. You will be required to have a current DBS certificate under 3 years old and we require references going back three years. If you've been with the same employer for three years’ then we'll only require one reference.

Eligibility to work
If you are successful at interview, CQC will need to verify your right to work in the UK using digital identity verification. Details of how to complete the right to work check will be provided as part of the conditional offer of employment. If we are unable to verify your right to work digitally, we are required to complete this face to face at one of our CQC Offices. Please be aware that we are unable to progress any offer of employment until right to work in the UK is confirmed.

We will require all successful applicants to be active in Professional Practice.

Benefits

The Benefits
We offer a wide range of benefits, including:

• Training and development opportunities.
• Wellbeing initiatives, such as gym discounts and meditation.
• Discount schemes (including eligibility for a Blue Light card, at a cost of £4.99 and valid for 2 years), reward vouchers, car leasing and more!

Please see our benefits page for the full list.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

Next steps
If you apply, you’ll need to create a profile and complete an online application form. Your application will be completely anonymous. Please see our information for applicants for more details on the process. We contact every applicant to let them know the outcome of their application, so you will hear from us whether or not you are shortlisted.

To access the full Job Description, please find this enclosed on our website, under the job posting.

For an informal discussion or further information please join a drop-in call led by Dr Sanjay Krishnamoorthy, National Professional Advisor Medical Specialties.

Please contact temprecruitment@cqc.org.uk with your preferred date from the options below and a Microsoft Teams invite will be shared.

• Thursday 26th February 1700-1800
• Friday 27th February 1200-1300
• Tuesday 3rd March 1200-1300
• Thursday 5th March 1700-1800
• Friday 6th March 1200-1300

Individual Adjustments…
We are committed to being open and transparent around our processes and we endeavour to offer every candidate the opportunity to perform at their best throughout the recruitment process. We seek to support candidates to identify potential challenges and work with them to identify and facilitate individual adjustments as appropriate. Should you require assistance and/or would like to request an adjustment at any stage of the recruitment process, please contact a member of the team via email: temprecruitment@cqc.org.uk.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

Please note this Post is NOT regulated by the Civil Service Commission.The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : Dr Sanjay Krishnamoorthy
• Email : temprecruitment@cqc.org.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : temprecruitment@cqc.org.uk