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Consultant Interviews: Guidance for Public Health Trainees
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General
Why do you want this job?
What skills do you think are needed for this post?
What do you find attractive about coming to work for this PCT?
How will you contribute effectively to the corporate agenda within the PCT?
What can you tell me about [local authority area where job is based]?
How would you develop the public health information function in this PCT?
Personal
What principles do you bring to your Public Health practice?
What areas of work would you like to develop an interest in?
Can you summarise what you would bring to the role of Consultant in Public Health?
How has your career to date equipped you for this role?
What does [previous non- public health experience] contribute to your ability to perform in a public health role?
What would you hope to achieve in your first 6 months in this post?
Where do you see yourself in 5 or 10 years’ time?
Looking at your career in 5- 10 years, how does this job fit into preparing you for the future? Similarly what are you bringing to this job?
What are your strengths and weaknesses?
What aspects of public health practice do you most enjoy?
What aspects of public health practice do you least enjoy?
What are your personal development plan/ training needs for this role?
What further training/ CPD do you feel you would need in the first 12 months (or 5 years) of the job?
Name a project that went well and what you learned from it and one that did not and what you learned from it
Are you on the Specialist Register?
Management and Leadership
What skills are required for good leadership?
What is your management style?
What experience do you have of managing people and budgets, and what additional skills would you like to develop?
How would you deal with the poor performance of a member of staff that you line manage?
How would you deal with conflict in general? (specific scenario may be used)
How would you deal with conflicting demands being placed on you by the NHS and the local authority (in relation to the DPH being a joint appointment)?
You will be invited to join lots of committees and groups, how will you manage this?
Health Improvement
Give an example of where you have worked on a multi-agency project addressing the wider determinants of health.
What is the role of the NHS in tackling crime and disorder?
Give an example of where you have worked in a partnership setting on an initiative targeted at a specific population or group.
Give an example of an initiative that you have worked on that addressed inequalities in access to healthcare.
Give an example of a high priority needs assessment that you have undertaken.
How will you engage with the public and patients to improve health?
Do you think that the NSFs contribute to tackling inequalities?
What would you do locally to address the national infant mortality target?
How would you engage with employers to improve health, in particular with small and medium enterprises?
How would you go about tackling teenage pregnancy in this area?
What is the role of the rest of the PCT in delivering health improvement?
What is the role of the acute trust in improving health locally?
Local Government
What are the responsibilities of the local authority?
What are the roles and responsibilities of the local authority in health improvement?
What are the key policy imperatives for local councils?
Does the local authority have a role to play in health improvement and how would you engage them to achieve this?
Conscious of the limited resource within public health, how can you effectively engage with and influence activities in the council?
How would you go about gaining the support of local councillors for a particular initiative?
How might you work to improve public health through the local authority’s responsibility for housing?
How would you explain to/ persuade/ convince a councillor that he/ she has an important role to play in public health?
Clinical Effectiveness
Give an example of an initiative that you have worked on that improved the quality of clinical services.
Give an account of a piece of work where you translated evidence into practice.
Why is ensuring clinical effectiveness an important part of public health practice?
Can you outline the relationship between clinical governance and clinical audit?
What experience do you have of developing clinical guidelines and policies?
How would you put in place a quality matrix for an acute service? Who would be your key allies? Using a specific example if you like, what parameters would you consider?
We are told that the primary care disease registers in many of our practices are incomplete. Are these registers of any use to public health? How would you go about improving their completeness?
Commissioning
What experience do you have of working with commissioners?
What do you think the public health contribution to commissioning should be?
How can you foster effective links with the local secondary care clinicians?
Have you been involved in de-commissioning of ineffective or poor value health services?
How might we evaluate value for money of services at PCT level?
What experience do you have of working with practice based commissioning?
In what ways could the public health directorate provide support to practice based commissioners?
What would world-class patient and public involvement look like?
Similarly what would world class clinical engagement look like?
Health Protection
What should we be doing locally to tackle TB?
Give an example of an outbreak that you have handled.
How would you deal with a case of meningitis while on-call?
How would you go about investigating a cancer cluster?
How do you keep up-to-date with health protection issues?
Research and Technical Skills
What would you say are the key academic skills and knowledge that all consultants in public health practice should have and maintain?
Are you able to analyse quantitative/ epidemiological data?
Are you able to correctly interpret epidemiological and health services research?
Give an example of how you have used research findings in your public health practice?
What experience have you had of collaborating with public health academics? Give an example of previous public health work that you completed in collaboration with public health academics.
How much contact did you have with an academic trainer during your public health training? What were the main strengths you gained from working with your academic trainer?
What research experience have you had? What benefits do you think this research experience will bring to your abilities as a public health consultant?
Do you intend to continue to conduct public health research as a public health consultant?
What teaching experience have you had? What benefits do you think this teaching experience will bring to your abilities as a public health consultant?
Academic Posts
Why would you like to pursue a career in academic public health?
How do you think academic and service public health can work together more effectively? Is this important?
What are your research interests?
Tell me about your previous and current research activity and any publications you have had from that.
What experience do you have of teaching? Which areas of teaching do you feel able to contribute to?
Some sample interview questions for clinical consultant interviews can also be found on:
http://www.medical-interviews.co.uk/Resources/QuestionsCONS.htm