Before you start on Public Health, you should be contacted by someone at the County Council to arrange an induction.

Your induction will take place primarily at Shire Hall in Cambridge town center. Over the course of a few days, you will be introduced via a series of short (30-60 minute) meetings with various members of the Public Health team, including your consultant. The meetings are informative, telling you about their role and where they fit within what Public Health do in the area.

Preparation - none essential, but would be helpful to you to read through a few examples of policies, as this is what you will spend most of your time on. http://www.cambsphn.nhs.uk/CCPF.aspx

The most useful piece of preparation would be to contact Hinchingbrooke Health Library (hch-tr.LibraryTeam@nhs.net) and request membership. From personal experience, the Health Database search training is incredibly useful and will make a huge difference if you haven't got a great deal of experience with conducting formal literature searches with complex questions to answer. It is a free course offered by Hinchingbrooke Health Library.

Shire Hall (Castle Court, Cambridge, CB3 0AP): This is the county council building, and the Public Health team are based in two rooms on the first floor. The building employs a “hot desk” system where you can work in more or less any room at any computer. There's usually a desk free in the Public Health office though. Failing that, or if you would prefer to work somewhere quiet, room 114 is a good option and it is close by. There's a small canteen on the second floor, and town centre is about a five minute walk.

Lockton House (Clarendon Road, Cambridge, CB2, 8FH): There are regular meetings held here on Tuesdays that you are invited to sit in on. It is a short walk from the train station. There is limited parking, so it is best to contact in advance. Reception is on the 5th floor (there's a lift).

Institute of Public Health (Forvie Site, Robinson Way, Cambridge, CB2 0SR): This is a public health building on the Addenbrookes campus. Teaching is held here once a month, and you'll get e-mails with more details closer to the time.

The Public Health team that you will interact with has a diverse background. There are consultants and registrars. You will be working in an office with research officers, data collectors / analysers, policy makers and service organisers. Given the hot desk system, you may also work alongside anyone from any department of the local council. In the course of your work, you are likely to liaise with consultants from a wide range of specialties from local hospitals.

The team is open and friendly.

The average week would be 9-5 working in Shire Hall, or working from home if appropriate and agreed (you will be given a fob for remote access to your Shire Hall desktop) on Monday, Wed-Fri. Tuesday is usually given over to one of the panel meetings at Lockton House.

Additional opportunities include:

Shadowing a Health Trainer - health trainers are based in General Practice and give advice to patients on smoking cessation and living a healthy life. Contact details to arrange this are given when you arrive.

Health Committee and Health and Wellbeing Board meetings - these are public forums that you are encouraged to attend, and details will be available on arrival.

There is also opportunity to arrange a 1-2 week period with the Health Protection Unit in Thetford.

There is no patient contact in the regular job.

The bulk of your work will be formed with developing clinical policies.

The Clinical Commissioning Group have policies which are either threshold policies (set criteria which must be met for a patient to be referred for treatment, such as for specific elective surgeries) or low priority policies (treatments which are not routinely funded by the CCG unless their clinician can demonstrate exceptional circumstances).

The policies need regular updates, and requests for new policies steadily arrive. The main role of the FY doctor in this job is to help with policy formation. This is done via evidence review, formulation of a draft policy, which then goes out to any specialties that it would affect, and then responding to feedback, and finally presenting it to panel for publication.

Again, there's no patients, but you are supported primarily by a research officer who is available on site or via e-mail, and your consultant. It's advisable to stay in regular contact with both to keep posted on projects.

All useful numbers and e-mails will be provided to you on arrival or shortly before.

There is scope for good work life balance, as this is a 9-5 job and it is located within central Cambridge so it's easy to go straight from work to a social event.

It is unbanded.

NICE www.nice.org.uk SIGN (Scottish guidelines) www.sign.ac.uk NHS Evidence www.evidence.nhs.uk Cochrane Reviews www.cochrane.org/cochrane-reviews National Institute for Health Research www.nihr.ac.uk/research TRIP database (resource for Evidence Based Medicine) www.tripdatabase.com NELH (National Electronic Library for Health) www.nelh.nhs.uk Prodigy clinical content for the Clinical Knowledge Summaries (CKS) service for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence www.prodigy.nhs.uk BMJ Clinical Evidence www.clinicalevidence.com The Public Health Resource Unit www.phru.nhs.uk/Pages/PHD/resources.htm CASP Critical Appraisal Skills Programme www.casp-uk.net Public Health Outcomes Framework www.phoutcomes.info