PhD Studentship: Technology Extended Learning to Enhance Communication Skills in Medical Students (TELECOMS Project)

Short info about job

Detail information about job PhD Studentship: Technology Extended Learning to Enhance Communication Skills in Medical Students (TELECOMS Project). Terms and conditions vacancy

PhD Studentship in the Leeds Institute of Medical Education

Supervisors: Dr Jonathan Darling, Dr Vania Dimitrova, Professor Trudie Roberts

Funding: Leeds Institute of Medical Education (LIME)

A PhD studentship is available for UK and EU citizens only due to funding. The studentship will attract an annual tax-free stipend of £13,500 for up to 3 years, subject to satisfactory progress and will cover the UK/EU tuition fees. The start date for this project is anticipated to be between October 2017 and February 2018, to meet the needs of the successful applicant. We are happy to consider applications from individuals wishing to study on a part time basis, and the stipend rate will be adjusted accordingly.

You should hold a first degree equivalent to at least a UK upper second class honours degree in a relevant subject (e.g. linguistics, communication studies or similar), or a medical degree or MSc in Clinical Education.

The following skills are desirable for this project, but not essential:

• A Masters degree in a relevant subject (linguistics, communication studies, clinical education or similar)
• Ability to conduct discourse analysis
• Understanding of medical consultation
• Experience in medical education
• Experience in the healthcare field
• Experience in consultation skills and communication
• Experience in using computational tools for data analysis, and the ability to learn new computational tools and them adopt in practice

This PhD is part of the TELECOMS project which aims initially to create a lifelike virtual patient with whom undergraduate medical students can interact to improve their communication skills around one consultation task. The PhD will be focused on analysis of repeated episodes of a simple medical consultation, through multimodal analysis (including text, speech, gestures) and mapping of consultation elements and pathways. This will be underpinned by relevant literature and user studies including videos of medical consultation. You will research, develop and implement the most appropriate techniques, with a view to having a deep understanding of a medical consultation, and the pathways it may take. Existing tools for video annotation will be used for data collection and analysis combining qualitative and quantitative methods. This will lead to a second phase of the project (not the main focus of this PhD) which is to use this analysis to create a simulated digital version of a patient who would respond appropriately and apparently spontaneously to a student engaging in a similar medical consultation. There will be additional programming and computational effort for this second phase of the project, which will build on the outputs of the PhD.

You will receive excellent training and support in a wide variety of aspects of medical education, consultation and communication skills, linguistics and discourse analysis. You will join a friendly and dedicated group with a strong track record of excellent publications. The successful student will be registered at the University of Leeds, and will join the postgraduate research community at the Leeds Institute of Medical Education.

For more details, queries and information on how to apply, please see the full advertisement. 

http://medhealth.leeds.ac.uk/download/3791/darling_dimitrova_roberts_lime_scholarship