Healthcare is changing rapidly, with a need for clinician professionals to work in different ways and across different settings with a focus on high quality patient-centred care.
Excellent education and training are key to ensuring that doctors and healthcare professionals are equipped to thrive in this dynamic, and often challenging, rapidly changing healthcare environment.
This requires innovative, robust and cutting-edge staff development approaches, which are underpinned by sound educational principles.
What is the Health Professions Education Unit?
The Health Professions Education Unit (HPEU) is advancing developments in health professions education and workforce research. From recruitment, selection and widening access to medical education, to curriculum development and assessment to enhance knowledge and understanding, the HPEU brings together researchers and health professionals from a range of disciplines.
We aim to raise the standard of medical and health professions education, research and training – ensuring that educators are inspiring the workforce of the future with the knowledge and skills needed to deliver brilliant healthcare. More broadly, our members are engaging in research addressing some of the crucial workforce challenges health services face. Indeed, interventions relating to the clinical workforce are health technologies, influencing the quality of care and patient outcomes. Thus, such staffing issues are worthy of an evidence base, that is often lacking.
We work closely with our local NHS partners across the region, as well as nationally and internationally with a range of prestigious collaborators. HPEU provides a scholarly space to develop and provide innovative approaches to teaching and learning featuring undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing professional development teaching.
"Whether using body painting to teach anatomy, creating situational judgment tests to support the selection of mental health professionals, or developing curriculum to teach empathetic communication skills, the Health Professions Education Unit is highly dedicated to (and capable of) finding the right balance between advancing knowledge and improving practice while making their work truly scholarly through peer reviewed dissemination to others….the team clearly exemplifies the multiplicity of roles that define scholarship in our field."
Professor Kevin Eva, Editor-in-chief Medical Education, Senior Scientist and Associate Director of the Centre for Health Education Scholarship at the University of British Columbia
"The Health Professions Education Unit provides a vital scholarly link between the Medical School and clinical sites to enhance the quality of teaching across the region."
Professor Vijay Jayagopal, Clinical Dean and Consultant Physician, York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Discover more
The work of the Unit is making a real difference to educating tomorrow's health professionals. Discover more about our inspirational people and our impactful research through our pages below.
If you are inspired by our research and you would like to collaborate, visit or study with us, please do get in touch: hpeu@hyms.ac.uk