Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Plymouth Integrative Health and social REF:  A7987
Care Centre (PIHC) 
Salary:  £34,804 - £40,322 per annum – Grade 7 
Faculty of Health 

We are seeking to appoint a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with knowledge and experience relevant to interprofessional education or interprofessional  working. This is a full-time position working 37 hours per week on a fixed-term basis.  The appointment will run until the end of July 2023 in the first instance due to funding, though we are hopeful the post may be extended until the end of July 2024.

The Plymouth Integrative Health and Social Care Centre (PIHC) has been established to embed interdisciplinary learning across the six schools of the Faculty of Health, and to deliver a UK-leading meaningful inter-professional learning experience for our students.  The range of health and social care professions in the Faculty is unusually broad: this presents an opportunity to replace a traditional School-centred approach to portfolio development with a cross-School approach to identify opportunities that will drive integrative learning.

Our aim is not just to make health and social care students better prepared for interprofessional working, but also to provide an enriching educational experience for all our students, including those on programmes such as Psychology and Biomedical Science that do not necessarily lead on to careers in health and social care.

PIHC’s direct staff consists of a Director, Dr Phil Gee, a Business Manager and Project Administrator, together with a team of academics who lead on interprofessional education in each of our six schools. We now wish to recruit a Postdoctoral Research Fellow to support the Centre’s work.

Initially, your focus will be on reviewing and reporting to the Centre on literature relevant to interprofessional learning and related areas, and on identifying an evidence base that can be used in planning interprofessional projects.  As PIHC projects develop, you will collaborate with academic teams and others (including relevant external groups) to ensure that appropriate evaluation is included from the start.  You will also support or lead the evaluation of PIHC projects as they are implemented, and will analyse and prepare data for publication.

The Faculty already has very successful examples of interprofessional learning in our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, and PIHC will allow us to scale up and embed best practice into the experience of all our students.  For example, we will build on our Schwartz Rounds, where staff and students from all six schools come together for reflective discussions about experiences in the workplace and learning environment, and on Time for Dementia, where students from different programmes come together for regular contact with a person with dementia and their carer.  You will play a leading role in evaluating and publishing data on projects such as these in order to provide the evidence on which best practice is identified.

Through the preparation of high quality publication materials for refereed journals and presenting results at conferences and appropriate events, you will disseminate the findings and take a lead in presenting the research.

You must have a PhD in a relevant field including but not limited to Psychology, Social or Behavioural Sciences, Education, Health or Social Care, or equivalent research experience and knowledge. You will have experience of designing and implementing qualitative and quantitative interview, survey and/or observations tools, analysing and writing up results. You will have professional / academic level English language skills, both verbal and written, including a proven record of quality research publications at, at least, 2-3* with respect to the Higher Education Funding Council for England’s Research Excellence Framework (REF).

Due to the nature of the project, we expect experience in or openness to working across disciplines, sectors, and cultures, with excellent interpersonal skills. You must also have very good organisational and time management skills with meticulous attention to detail. In addition you must have successful team leadership skills with the ability to work well within a team.

For an informal discussion to find out more about the role then please contact Dr Phil Gee using the email PIHC@plymouth.ac.uk

We offer a competitive salary package and a generous pension and holiday scheme. We also offer a range of other benefits, including ongoing development opportunities. 

Closing date:  12 midnight, Monday 2 August 2021 

Interviews are expected to take place on Thursday 19 August and you will be notified if you have been shortlisted or not.