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 ensure that doctors and healthcare professionals are well equipped to thrive in this dynamic, and often challenging, healthcare environment.
Innovative, robust and cutting-edge staff development approaches are required, which are underpinned by sound educational research.
What is the Health Professions Education Unit?
The Health Professions Education Unit (HPEU) at Hull York Medical School is advancing developments in health professions education and workforce research. HPEU brings together researchers and health professionals from a range of disciplines, from across the Medical School and our parent universities, as well as national and international collaborators.
We seek 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 crucial workforce challenges in health services. 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 severely lacking.
We aim to:
- Build a network of researchers, educators and scholars in health professional education
- Improve the quality of education and student experience at Hull York Medical School
- Address crucial workforce challenges in health care
- Produce high quality translational research
We work closely with our local NHS partners across the region supporting the professional development of educators. 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
"Since starting the MSc in Health Professions Education, I have led a research project for Health Education England, published a paper, and written an award-winning essay. I am about to start a role as the Head of Psychiatry at a major medical school, and the journey through this programme has certainly helped me to get where I am today."
Dr Jigna Patel, MSc in Health Professions Education graduate
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 would like to collaborate, visit or study with us, please do get in touch: hpeu@hyms.ac.uk