Postgraduate research opportunities Co-producing a Common Clinical Conditions service in the Scottish Prison Service
ApplyKey facts
- Opens: Monday 1 August 2022
- Number of places: 2
- Duration: 3 years full time; part-time study optional.
Overview
People within prison services have a poor record of health and experience profound health inequalities. The prison population have significant disadvantages including poor health literacy. In general society people with poor health literacy experience worse health outcomes than normal and find it challenging to navigate health systems. This PhD will focus on co-designing a service that enables people within prisons to work with healthcare professionals to manage their common clinical conditions.Eligibility
Applicants will typically be expected to have at least a 2:1 undergraduate degree or above in a relevant discipline and satisfy the University minimal entry requirements for PhD study. Experience of qualitative research would be beneficial.

Project Details
Within prison environments, access to healthcare and specific healthcare professionals, such as pharmacists, is lacking. Within the Scottish Prison Service, work is underway to explore how people within the Scottish Prison Service can co-design a service that enables them to work with healthcare professionals to manage their common clinical conditions. The co-designed service should help service-users to pursue health-improving behaviours and safeguard their health, by actively engaging in health seeking behaviours. The work will be informed by the MRC’s guidance on developing, implementing, and evaluating complex interventions which will consider the processes involved, the people and the outcomes. The successful PhD applicant will be expected to identify relevant underpinning programme theory to guide the PhD process.
Part 1: Exploration of existing health provision within the prison environment, including access to services, healthcare professionals and utilisation of technology such as telehealth facilities [e.g. using on-site observations]
Part 2: Understanding healthcare needs of people within prison services to support service conceptualisation and identification of intended clinical, humanistic, and economic outcomes (e.g. improved management of common conditions, improved health seeking behaviour) [e.g. using interviews / focus group]
Part 3: Co-design common clinical conditions service with multiple stakeholders [e.g. multiple workshops, consensus methods]
Part 4: Early test of common clinical conditions service [e.g. prototype / feasibility testing]
Funding details
Currently the project is unfunded. The applicant is welcome to work with the supervisor to find sponsorship for tuition and bench fees (of between £5,000 and £8,000) per annum for the duration of studies. A wider Project Advisory Group involving the National Prisons Pharmacy Adviser will support this research.
While there is no funding in place for opportunities marked "unfunded", there are lots of different options to help you fund postgraduate research. Visit funding your postgraduate research for links to government grants, research councils funding and more, that could be available.
Apply
Number of places: 2
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Contact us
Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Natalie Weir, natalie.m.weir@strath.ac.uk, if you have any questions about this or any other PhD opportunity.