Health Research – Graduate Teaching Assistant PhD Studentship

PGRs working on health, social care or medical related projects are normally housed in the Faculty of Health, Social Care and Medicine.

The Faculty of Health, Social Care and Medicine is one of the largest providers of health and social care education in the North West of England. It is the home of the new Edge Hill University Medical School. The faculty has an excellent and rapidly growing research portfolio and community of postgraduate researchers. Research within the faculty is supported by substantial external funding and involves both national and international collaborations. Our excellent relationships with health and social care providers ensure research in the faculty is highly relevant to the rapidly changing health and social care landscape.

Research in the faculty spans three main themes:

• Prevention and management of conditions in adults.
• Improving professional practice.
• Children, young people, and families.

The University particularly welcomes applications for studentships in the project areas outlined below with additional research information on the research area webpages. All PGRs will be supported by a supervisory team with appropriate expertise. Also, see the University’s research repository for further information on the research outputs of each member of staff.

Contact

Please direct all enquiries about proposed projects on topics related to health research to Professor Lucy Bray, Graduate School research degree contact for health research, by emailing [email protected] stating the specific research theme/s of interest from the research themes list.

Research themes

Children, young people and families

Improving children’s health literacy in health care settings

This project will work collaboratively with children, young people, parent/carers, health professionals and health care managers to consider the individual, distributed and organisational factors which impact on children’s ability to access, understand, navigate and use health information and health services.

Project contact Professor Lucy Bray.

Exploring good practice in the use of the arts (music, dance, drama or visual arts) to support parent-infant relationships 

This research aims to capture good practice and translate it to everyday tools for use amongst parents and professionals. It is expected that these tools will support relationship-building which in turn will foster perinatal mental health and wellbeing, during this, often challenging period for parents and their babies.

Project contact Professor Vicky Karkou.

Educate4Diabetes – Measuring the impact of a digital platform for Type 1 Diabetes education for patients in hard to reach communities and healthcare professionals in Southeast Asia (SEA)

A mixed method comparative study measuring the impact of a digital solution to reach out, educate, and engage communities in SEA to manage their Type 1 diabetes.

Project contact Professor Axel Kaehne.

An exploration of the current mental health needs of looked after children and care leavers in England.

This study will seek to explore the current mental health needs of looked after children and those who have recently left ‘care’ of local authority in England. It will build on existing literature, but look to provide a more current account, by analysing the impact of contemporary features of UK society – including recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, the cost of living/energy crisis, and an ‘unaffordable’ and ‘unattainable’ housing market.

Project contact Dr Ciarán Murphy.

Improving professional practice

Improving health professional’s performance, mental health and wellbeing using insights from sport psychology

This is a design-based research project using insights from techniques used by elite athletes and will explore, design and evaluate a sport psychology – based intervention for enhancing health professional’s performance, mental health and wellbeing.

Project contact Professor John Sandars.

Engaging and developing clinical nurse leaders in evidence-based practice.

Implementing research evidence into clinical nursing practice remains problematic. One of the significant factors shown to contribute to this is the lack of engagement in evidence-based practice (EBP) and understanding of EBP by clinical nurse leaders. This proposed project will investigate barriers to and implement and evaluate an intervention to engage and develop nurse leaders with EBP in a children’s hospital.

Project contact Professor Lyvonne Tume.