PhD Studentship

Closing Date: 20240812
Term: Full-time

PhD title: Using employee voice to improve teamworking, psychological safety and quality in maternity care

The NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Yorkshire and Humber (ARC) is inviting applications for a full-time PhD studentship, to start in 2024, as part of its interdisciplinary Improvement Science work stream. This research studentship seeks to bring together healthcare improvement science with organisational psychology to develop novel approaches to the use of employee voice to improve the experience of staff and patients. Staff narratives about experiences in healthcare settings such as maternity services are potentially a rich source of intelligence on working conditions, safety concerns and aspects of organisational culture, such as teamworking climate. Developing processes for effectively listening and responding to employee voice may enhance workforce wellbeing and mental health, enhance interprofessional communication, improve safety/teamworking climate and provide a psychologically safe environment in which employees can speak-up to raise concerns about quality and safety of patient care. The studentship will appeal to candidates from a range of healthcare or social science backgrounds and may additionally appeal to candidates with a specific interest in applying qualitative methods in an applied health service context to develop and test organisational interventions.

Supervisors:

Dr Jonathan Benn

Prof Rebecca Lawton

Dr Ugochi Nwulu

Dr Deborah Horner