Question 1

Why do you want to work in digital transformation and clinical informatics?

Accepted Answer

Honestly, it started with frustration. I was working as a nurse on a busy medical ward when the trust was still half on paper and half on three different systems. One night I spent nearly twenty minutes trying to find out whether a patient had already had their evening dose of an anticoagulant, because the chart said one thing and the electronic list said another. Nothing went wrong, but I remember thinking that the system was making it easier to make a mistake than to get it right. When the trust started planning its new electronic patient record, I put my name down as a super user. I sat in design sessions and realised I could be the person in the room saying, "That screen looks fine to you, but at three in the morning with a confused patient and a bleep going off, nobody will scroll down to find that box." Seeing that comment change the build was the moment I knew this was where I wanted to be. What draws me in is that good informatics is invisible when it works. The right information is there for the right clinician at the right time, and they spend more time with the patient and less time hunting. I also know it isn't glamorous. Go-lives are exhausting, people are understandably cautious about change, and a badly configured system can cause real harm. That's exactly why I think it needs people who understand clinical work and patient safety, and who are willing to listen. For me, this role is a way of improving care for far more patients than I could reach on one ward,…

Question 2

How does digital transformation fit with the current priorities of the NHS?

Accepted Answer

In England, the long-term plan for the NHS talks about three big shifts: from hospital to community, from sickness to prevention, and from analogue to digital. I see digital as the thread that makes the other two possible. You can't move care closer to home safely if the district nurse, the GP and the hospital team are all looking at different, incomplete records. Practically, that means a few things. Getting every trust onto a good-quality electronic patient record, so clinicians aren't relying on paper notes that can't be shared. Joining records up across a system so information follows the patient. Giving patients more access to their own information and services through things like the NHS App. And using data properly to plan services and spot where people are being left behind. I'd be careful not to overpromise, though. Digital only helps if it's designed around the people using it, if it's safe, and if it doesn't widen inequality. Someone without a smartphone or data, or with limited English or a learning disability, shouldn't get a worse service because we've moved things online. So when I think about priorities, I hold that alongside the NHS values, especially everyone counts. Locally, I'd expect it to show up in the trust's digital strategy and its links with the integrated care board. Before today I read your strategy and noticed the focus on finishing the EPR rollout to community services, and that's the kind of work I'd love to be part of. The national picture…

Question 3

Talk us through how you would plan the go-live of a new electronic patient record on an inpatient ward.

Accepted Answer

I'd start by treating go-live as a clinical risk event, because for a few days the ward is doing something new while caring for very unwell people. So my planning would begin months before, not the week before. First, readiness. I'd want a clear set of go-live criteria agreed with the clinical leads: the build tested against real workflows, end-to-end testing complete, training completion above an agreed level for each staff group, devices and printers in the right places, smartcards and access working, and the clinical safety officer satisfied that hazards in the hazard log have controls in place. If those aren't met, there's a proper go or no-go decision, and that decision belongs to senior clinical and operational leaders, not just the project. Second, cutover. On an inpatient ward the hard part is the patients already there. I'd plan how current medication charts, observations, allergies and outstanding tasks get moved onto the new system, usually with a back-loading team working through each patient and a second person checking, especially for medicines. I'd agree a cutover time with the ward, often avoiding the busiest periods like the morning drug round or handover. Third, support. Floorwalkers on the ward around the clock for the first days, ideally people who know the clinical area, plus super users from the team itself. A clear way to report problems, a command centre that triages issues by clinical risk, and daily huddles so the ward hears what's been fixed.…

Question 4

What do you understand by DCB0129 and DCB0160, and how would you use a hazard log?

Accepted Answer

In England, DCB0129 and DCB0160 are the clinical risk management standards for health IT. DCB0129 applies to the manufacturer, the company that builds the system. DCB0160 applies to the organisation deploying and using it, so the trust. Both require a named clinical safety officer, who is a suitably trained, registered clinician, and both expect a proper clinical risk management process with a hazard log and a safety case report. The other UK nations have their own arrangements, so I'd always check what applies locally. The supplier's work under DCB0129 covers hazards in the product itself. But a system that's safe in principle can become unsafe in how we configure it and use it on our wards, and that's what DCB0160 is about. For example, the supplier might have a safe allergy module, but if we set it up so allergies only show on a screen nurses rarely open, we've created a new hazard. A hazard log is where we record each potential hazard: what could go wrong, what might cause it, what the effect on the patient would be, how likely and how severe it is, what controls we're putting in place, and the risk that's left afterwards. Controls might be design changes, training, a business process or a warning on screen, and each one should have an owner. How I'd use it in practice is to keep it alive. I'd bring it to design sessions, add hazards raised by nurses in testing, update it after go-live when real incidents or near misses come in, and make sure nothing goes live with an…

Question 5

A senior consultant tells you the new system is slowing him down and says he won't use it. How would you handle this?

Accepted Answer

The first thing I'd do is take it seriously, because he's probably not wrong that it's slowing him down. Most resistance I've met comes from people who care about their patients and feel the system is getting in the way. So I'd ask if I could spend some time with him, ideally on his ward round or in his clinic, rather than having the conversation in a corridor. I'd watch how he works and ask him to show me exactly where it hurts. Sometimes it's something we can fix quickly: his favourites aren't set up, he's using a long route when there's a shortcut, or his order sets weren't built for his specialty. Sometimes it's a genuine design problem, like too many clicks to request a common test, and then I'd log it properly, take it to the design or optimisation group and tell him what's happening to it. People are much more patient when they can see their feedback going somewhere. I'd also be honest with him. Not using the system isn't really an option, because if his notes and orders are on paper while everyone else is working electronically, information gets lost between teams and that's a risk to patients. I'd say that calmly, without lecturing, and focus on what we can do together. If he's willing, I'd love to involve him, because a respected senior clinician who helps shape the system can bring a whole department with him. If after all that he still refused, and I thought it was creating a risk, for example orders not being visible to nurses, I'd escalate it through the…

Question 6

We are about to launch a patient-facing app for booking and letters. How would you make sure it doesn't leave people behind?

Accepted Answer

I'd start by accepting that some of our patients won't use the app, and that's fine. Digital exclusion isn't just about older people. It includes people who can't afford data, people with learning disabilities, people with sight loss, people with limited English, people who are homeless and people who simply don't trust technology. Some patients face several of those at once. So the first principle is that the non-digital route stays just as good. Letters still go out by post for those who need them, the phone line is properly staffed, and nobody loses their place or gets a worse service for not using the app. I'd want that written into the project as a requirement, not left as an assumption. Second, I'd look at who uses our services and do an equality impact assessment early, so we know which groups might be affected. I'd want to talk to patient groups, Healthwatch and our patient experience team, and test the app with real people, including some who aren't confident online. You learn more watching one person struggle with a login screen than from any report. Third, accessibility. As a public sector body we have legal duties on the accessibility of our websites and apps, so I'd check the product meets the recognised accessibility standards, works with screen readers and lets people change text size. Letters should be in plain English, with options for other languages and easy read. Finally, I'd measure it. After launch I'd look at who is and isn't using the app, by age,…

Question 7

A week after go-live, a ward reports that some blood results aren't showing on the new system. What would you do?

Accepted Answer

My first thought would be the patients. If results aren't showing, a clinician could miss an abnormal potassium or a rising creatinine, so I'd treat it as urgent before I even knew the cause. I'd go to the ward, or speak to the nurse in charge straight away, and get specifics: which patients, which tests, since when. Then I'd escalate immediately through the go-live command centre or service desk as a high-priority clinical safety issue, and make sure the clinical safety officer knows. I wouldn't try to fix it myself on the ward. While the technical team investigated, I'd agree an interim safety measure with the clinical leads and pathology. That might be the lab phoning critical results directly, clinicians checking results in the lab system, or a list of affected patients being reviewed by a doctor to confirm nothing abnormal had been missed. I'd also check whether other wards were affected, because if it's a problem with an interface or a mapping, it rarely stays on one ward. I'd make sure it was reported as an incident through the trust's reporting system. If any patient had been harmed, or might have been, the clinical team would need to consider duty of candour, and the clinical safety officer would update the hazard log. Communication matters a lot here. I'd keep the ward updated regularly, even when there's no news, because silence makes people lose confidence fast. And once it was fixed, I'd want the fix confirmed by checking real results on the ward, not just told…

Question 8

Tell us about a time you worked with IT, a supplier and clinical staff to deliver something. How did you keep everyone together?

Accepted Answer

The example I'd use is when I helped roll out electronic observations onto our surgical wards. There were really three teams with three languages. The supplier talked in releases and configuration, our IT colleagues worried about wireless coverage and devices, and the nurses wanted to know whether it would get their obs done quicker and flag a deteriorating patient. Early on, things got tense. The supplier had promised a feature to escalate a high early warning score automatically, but our IT team found it wouldn't work with our bleep system. The nurses heard about it second-hand and assumed the whole thing was being watered down. What I did was get everyone in one room, physically, which was rarer than you'd think. I asked the ward sister to walk us through what actually happens when a patient's score goes up, step by step. That changed the conversation, because the supplier and IT could see why the escalation mattered, and the nurses could see the technical problem was real rather than people being awkward. We agreed a workaround for go-live, with a clear escalation process on the ward and the score showing prominently on the central display, and we logged the automatic alert as a hazard with a plan to fix it in the next release. I kept a simple shared action log and sent a short update every Friday, so nobody was surprised. What I learned is that most conflict between these groups comes from people not seeing each other's world. My job was really translation: turning…

Digital Transformation & Clinical Informatics Interview Questions & Answers

About this NHS interview question bank

Free NHS interview questions and model answers

Question 1: Why do you want to work in digital transformation and clinical informatics?

Question 2: How does digital transformation fit with the current priorities of the NHS?

Question 3: Talk us through how you would plan the go-live of a new electronic patient record on an inpatient ward.

Question 4: What do you understand by DCB0129 and DCB0160, and how would you use a hazard log?

Question 5: A senior consultant tells you the new system is slowing him down and says he won't use it. How would you handle this?

Question 6: We are about to launch a patient-facing app for booking and letters. How would you make sure it doesn't leave people behind?

Question 7: A week after go-live, a ward reports that some blood results aren't showing on the new system. What would you do?

Question 8: Tell us about a time you worked with IT, a supplier and clinical staff to deliver something. How did you keep everyone together?

Unlock 32 more NHS interview questions