Two Funded PhDs in Patient Safety at Imperial College London
Job Description
Location: St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, London
Applications are invited for 2 PhD Studentships across the research themes of the NIHR North West London Patient Safety Research Collaboration (NIHR NWL PSRC). Please note we can only fund for Home UK tuition fees at this time.
The Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI) is one of the seven global challenge institutes at Imperial College. Housed within the Faculty of Medicine, the Institute is well placed to leverage the College’s wealth of multidisciplinary talent to innovate across science, technology, design, and policy. By doing so, the Institute’s goal is to develop evidence-based, cutting-edge solutions to the issues faced by healthcare systems and to create transformational improvement in the quality and equity of patient care, population health and wellbeing. The Institute attracts a strong cohort of students and scholars across its educational and academic programmes and continues to advance a broadening research agenda, through its five interdisciplinary centres of excellence which includes the NIHR North West London Patient Safety Research Collaborative (PSRC). Our aims are to advance the scientific understanding of patient safety, address safety challenges as healthcare evolves and further international research collaborations. We work with local, national and international partners to support the wider dissemination and implementation of patient safety improvements and interventions.
We develop patient safety in the NHS and internationally through engagement with patients and the public, clinical partners, healthcare organisations, industry and government. We use our funding to deliver sustainable long-term, high impact programmes of translational research in patient safety. Research Areas There are 2x studentships currently available in the following research areas: 1. Evaluating and integrating patient safety in the design of new service delivery models Please note that projects have been scoped and successful applicants will have the ability to take on one of two research projects. There is also the potential to shape the PhD around the candidate’s interests. Interested applicants are encouraged to seek more information through the NIHR NWL PSRC website. Informal, exploratory chats can also be scheduled. Please email the Centre Manager, Eleni Daniels (eleni.daniels17@imperial.ac.uk), for general queries regarding the Centre and the hiring process.
Evaluating and integrating patient safety in the design of new service delivery models
This theme is led by Dr Ana Luisa Neves and Prof the Lord Ara Darzi. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered rapid changes in service delivery and urged the NHS to utilise new technologies to support them. While enduring benefits are possible, virtual care also comes with safety risks. Alternative service delivery models involve changes on when, where and how care is delivered. This theme will support the safe implementation of alternative service delivery models by using data-driven approaches to generate evidence on their safety impact, empowering patients and staff towards safer use and co-designing, implementing, and evaluating interventions.
The two projects include:
- Evaluating the safety of virtual consultations and generating data-driven insights to identify high-risk patients
- Generating data-driven insights into patient-provider communication in virtual consultations
Qualifications and person-specifications
We are looking for candidates with a strong academic background (with a first class degree) or MSc in the following subjects or related:
- Health policy
- Health services research and service evaluation
- Psychology, decision-making, behavioural science and other related disciplines
- Data science and medical informatics
- Healthcare quality improvement
Successful candidates will have experience in undertaking independent research in the above subjects. Applicants must also demonstrate familiarity with mainstream quantitative research methods and qualitative research methods used in patient safety.
- Qualitative methods, including:
- Ethnographic research (including observational)
- Focus groups
- In-depth interviews
- Thematic analysis
- Consensus studies
- Service audits and evaluation
- Quantitative methods, including:
- Survey design and data collection
- Data mining techniques applied to healthcare
- Proficiency in data preparation, cleaning and analysis using standard statistical packages (e.g. SPSS, Stata, R)
- Experimental studies of human judgment
