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Nursing and Midwifery (PhD)

2024-25 (also available for 2023-24, 2025-26)

This course is eligible for Doctoral loan funding. Find out more.

Start date

1 October 2024

13 January 2025

14 April 2025

Duration

The maximum duration for a PhD is 3 years (36 months) full-time or 6 years (72 months) part-time with an optional submission pending (writing-up) period of 12 months.

Sometimes it may be possible to mix periods of both full-time and part-time study.

If studying on a part-time basis, you must establish close links with the University and spend normally not less than an average of 10 working days per year in the university, excluding participation in activities associated with enrolment, re-registration and progression monitoring. You are also expected to dedicate 17.5 hours per week to the research.

Application deadlines

For October 2024

07 June 2024 for International and Scholarship students

28 June 2024 for Home students

For January 2025

18 October 2024 for International and Scholarship students

15 November 2024 for Home students

For April 2025

24 January 2025 for International and Scholarship students

21 February 2025 for Home students

About the research degree

A PhD is the highest academic award for which a student can be registered. This programme allows you to explore and pursue a research project built around a substantial piece of work, which has to show evidence of original contribution to knowledge.

Completing a PhD can give you a great sense of personal achievement and help you develop a high level of transferable skills which will be useful in your subsequent career, as well as contributing to the development of knowledge in your chosen field.

Our research degrees are available as full-time, part-time and some are offered distance learning.

You are expected to work to an approved programme of work including appropriate programmes of postgraduate study (which may be drawn from parts of existing postgraduate courses, final year degree programmes, conferences, seminars, masterclasses, guided reading or a combination of study methods).

This programme of research culminates in the production of a large-scale piece of written work in the form of a research thesis that should not normally exceed 80,000 words.

You will be appointed a main supervisor who will normally be part of a supervisory team, comprising of up to three members to advise and support you on your project.

Entry requirements

The normal level of attainment required for consideration for entry is:​

  • Master's degree from a UK University or equivalent, normally with a classification of merit or distinction, in a discipline appropriate to the proposed programme to be followed, or
  • an upper second class honours degree (2:1) from a UK university in a discipline appropriate to that of the proposed programme to be followed, or
  • appropriate research or professional experience at postgraduate level, which has resulted in published work, written reports or other appropriate evidence of accomplishment.

If your first language is not English, you will need to meet the minimum requirements of an English Language qualification. The minimum for IELTS is 6.5 overall with no element lower than 6.0, or equivalent. Read more about the University’s entry requirements for students outside of the UK on our Where are you from information pages.

Why choose Huddersfield?


There are many reasons to choose the University of Huddersfield and here are just five of them:

  1. We were named University of the Year by Times Higher Education in 2013.
  2. Huddersfield is the only University where 100% of permanent teaching staff are Fellows of the Higher Education Authority.
  3. Our courses have been accredited by 41 professional bodies.
  4. 94.6% of our postgraduate students go on to work and/or further study within six months of graduating.
  5. We have world-leading applied research groups in Biomedical Sciences, Engineering and Physical Sciences, Social Sciences and Arts and Humanities.

What can I research?

There are several research topics available for this degree. See below examples of research areas including an outline of the topics, the supervisor, funding information and eligibility criteria:

Outline

Educational topics such as competence and creative assessment strategies. Approaches/mixed methods for this topic can be case study research or educational evaluation.

Funding

Please see our Scholarships page to find out about funding or studentship options available.

Deadline

Supervisors

How to apply

Outline

Advanced Clinical Practice has increased exponentially in the UK. Advanced Clinical Practitioners now work in must areas of health care. There still remains a dearth of research about the benefits of the role apart from cost effectiveness and patient satisfaction. Additionally, there is an increase in these globally which would benefit from comparative research, especially in areas such as diagnostic reasoning and clinical decision making.

Funding

Please see our Scholarships page to find out about funding or studentship options available.

Deadline

Supervisors

How to apply

Outline

Advanced Practice has been developing in the UK since the early 1990s. There are many clinicians working in this field yet the research in the UK remains limited, focusing mainly on patient satisfaction and cost savings. This topic is at the forefront of healthcare and needs to be more fully evaluated.

Funding

Please see our scholarships page at https://www.hud.ac.uk/research/howtoapply/scholarships to find out about funding or studentship options available

Deadline

Please see details via the following web page https://www.hud.ac.uk/research/howtoapply/

Supervisors

How to apply

Outline

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has identified that although the number of people accessing assisted conception is increasing overall in the UK, rates remain low in BAME communities. Further under-represented are gamete donors from BAME communities. Projects in this area would likely use qualitative methods and may examine experiences and perceptions amongst various stakeholders, including individuals considering or with personal experience of assisted conception (individuals or couples), health professionals and community organisations.

Funding

Please see our Scholarships page to find out about funding or studentship options available.

Deadline

Supervisors

How to apply

Outline

The UK health system largely depends on the international workforce and one in five staff in the NHS are from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) background. BAME NHS staff wellbeing is a growing public health problem. The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has further affected the BAME workforce in the UK.

Funding

Please see our Scholarships page to find out about funding or studentship options available.

Deadline

Supervisors

How to apply

Outline

Dementia is public health problem, which requires urgent attention. Globally people are growing older and increasing the number of people living with dementia. About 60% of them live in Low- and Middle- Income Countries (LMICs). The health system preparedness in dementia care is underprivileged in many LMICs.

Funding

Please see our Scholarships page to find out about funding or studentship options available.

Deadline

Supervisors

How to apply

Outline

A review of the literature was conducted as the first phase of an international project to study the competencies of nurse educators who use Simulation-Based Education (SBL). Later, this project continued with the funding of a grant from the European Union (EU) to develop the competencies for nurse educators to integrate SBL into curriculum delivery. Laerdal, a major medical equipment manufacturer including medical simulators, have since adopted this framework to offer the educators who utilise SBL. The international project team are continuing with this development and are currently (2016) in a collaborative working relationship with Laerdal to develop the research.

Funding

Please see our scholarships page at https://www.hud.ac.uk/research/howtoapply/scholarships to find out about funding or studentship options available

Deadline

Please see details via the following web page https://www.hud.ac.uk/research/howtoapply/

Supervisors

How to apply

Outline

Patients and their families provide important feedback that can be used to inform the development and improvement of health services. In this programme of work we aim to explore different approaches to this process in clinical practice settings. Students will gain experience in qualitative and quantitative research methods.

Funding

Please see our scholarships page at https://www.hud.ac.uk/research/howtoapply/scholarships to find out about funding or studentship options available

Deadline

Please see details via the following web page https://www.hud.ac.uk/research/howtoapply/

Supervisors

How to apply

Outline

Transferability of all research topics and how it produces change in clinical practice. There is also an important issue to research looking at the sociology of medicine and how the prescriber and APN is situated in the ‘professions’. Building capacity is also important - nurses and allied health professionals are being encouraged nationally to expand their practice. How do we build capacity in the undergraduate phase of their careers to facilitate advanced skills?

Funding

Please see our scholarships page at https://www.hud.ac.uk/research/howtoapply/scholarships to find out about funding or studentship options available

Deadline

Please see details via the following web page https://www.hud.ac.uk/research/howtoapply/

Supervisors

How to apply

Outline

Spirituality is part of holistic care yet the concept is not well understand and health professionals struggle to integrate it into their practice. There is a need for more research in this area to ensure that spirituality is integrated into practice to provide fully holistic care.

Funding

Please see our Scholarships page to find out about funding or studentship options available.

Deadline

Supervisors

How to apply

Outline

This proposal explores how to develop an often neglected but important aspect of person-centred care. Members of the Spirituality Special Interest Group at the University (now reconstituted as the Spirituality and Compassion Special interest Group, SCSIG and led by myself) have supported a number of PhD studies to date as well as conducted a number of research studies. The concept of Spiritually Competent Practice (SCP; Wattis, Curran and Rogers, 2017) was developed from one of these pieces of work (Jones, 2017). It understands spirituality as part of the human search for meaning and distinguishes it from religion, seeing spiritual care as an important part of holistic person-centred care. My own PhD explored how concepts of Availability and Vulnerability, based on the Celtic Christian tradition, could be ‘secularised’ in Advanced Nursing Practice in Primary Care (Rogers 2016). Earlier work in the group had looked at health care educators’ attitudes to and understanding of spirituality, using brief rating scales developed for the purpose (Prentis et al., 2014). Working in partnership with the local NHS Mental Health Trust we have explored and extended these studies into Mental Health staff (Rogers et al 2019/2020), looking at attitudes to spirituality in mental health care and exploring the utility of SCP and A&V in this context. A study looking at mental health patients’ views has been interrupted by the pandemic but is in progress. The next phase of our research is to extend similar work into the fields of primary care and secondary care. This proposal is for a study exploring attitudes of primary care clinicians (including General Practitioners and Advanced Practitioners) to spirituality and the utility of SCP and A&V in developing understanding in primary care. It would use a mixed methods approach and details of the project would be developed to incorporate interests of a prospective PhD candidate as well as the SCSIG group’s interest in the wider applicability of SCP and A&V as educational and clinical tools in this area.

Funding

Please see our Scholarships page to find out about funding or studentship options available.

Deadline

Supervisors

How to apply

Outline

Electronic health record (EHR) systems have the potential to support the transformation of healthcare, with concurrent enhancements in both quality and safety. However, there needs to be a transformation also in the way in which we conceptualize the role of, and content of, EHR systems. Existing EHR systems fail to support and reflect the dynamic, interdisciplinary and patient-centred nature of healthcare practice, thereby inhibiting the optimal use of potentially valuable data. Research within this topic area seeks to explore new approaches to documentation, taking patient-centred care as its initial focus.

Funding

Please see our Scholarships page to find out about funding or studentship options available.

Deadline

Supervisors

How to apply

Outline

There is now extensive evidence indicating how simulation-based learning (SBL) increases confidence and competence. Other studies have investigated various aspects of student learning using SBL. Simulation-based research needs to move beyond this and seek to investigate the impact that SBL has on patient care and outcomes. Measuring such impact can be problematic and as such be a barrier to developing this important understanding. Therefore, there is a need to develop and test robust tools and approaches that can be used for this purpose. Developing effective evaluative tools would offer the academy important resources to move beyond the present knowledge base on SBL in healthcare education.

Funding

Please see our Scholarships page to find out about funding or studentship options available.

Deadline

Supervisors

How to apply

Outline

The achievement of essential procedural skills is a fundamental aspect of any pre-registration nursing programme. The delivery of these complex and often didactic clinical skills is challenging but necessary to adhere to the required professional standards (NMC, 2018). Current challenges include the range of additional procedural skills (NMC, 2018), increased student numbers and limited resources. Investigating alternatives to the traditional face-to-face approach used in many settings to deliver the teaching and practice of these essential skills is therefore needed.

Funding

Please see our Scholarships page to find out about funding or studentship options available.

Deadline

Supervisors

How to apply

Outline

SBL has been utilised in different forms within healthcare education for decades. Despite this there exists limited data the impact that teaching and learning using SBL has on patient care and outcomes. This study would seek to develop and contribute to this essential understanding.

This would be a follow-up or concurrent study to the one above and therefore much of the brief outline above would also be applicable.

Funding

Please see our Scholarships page to find out about funding or studentship options available.

Deadline

Supervisors

How to apply

Outline

Death, dying, and bereavement are significant human experiences that require social exploration. Just now, as the world continues to grapple with a myriad of challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic, issues related to human mortality are resonating with the public and policymakers alike, with a renewed sense of importance.

To contribute to knowledge about lived experiences of death, dying and loss we welcome applications to conduct original research about different aspects of these experiences from social, cultural, and relational perspectives.

Indicative areas of study could include:
Personal relationships and intimacy at the end of life, inequalities, social identity, materiality and material culture, palliative and end of life care and particular experiences of loss such miscarriage, stillbirth, and neonatal death.

Funding

Please see our Scholarships page to find out about funding or studentship options available.

Deadline

Supervisors

How to apply

Applications are welcome for a diverse range of specialist topics and areas of expertise. We would, especially welcome applications for topics in which the proposed research is in line with the research priorities of the School of Human and Health Sciences.

There are different ways to find the right research topic for you:

  1. Find a supervisor and design your own research project – explore the Huddersfield Research Portal to find research and researcher expertise to find the area you’re interested in.

  2. Browse our listed funded opportunities.

  3. To find out more about the research we conduct, take a look at our Research, Innovation and Skills webpages, where you will find information on each research area.

Student support

At the University of Huddersfield, you'll find support networks and services to help you get ahead in your studies and social life. Whether you study at undergraduate or postgraduate level, you'll soon discover that you're never far away from our dedicated staff and resources to help you to navigate through your personal student journey. Find out more about all our support services.

Researcher Environment

Our postgraduate researchers contribute to our thriving research [culture] community at Huddersfield, in return, we provide an experience that enhances your potential and inspires you to think big and become a globally competitive researcher.

Join our community of like-minded people who are passionate about research and gain access to world-leading facilities, advanced research skills training, and expert career advice.

Reduced inequalities

  • We recently ranked 6 out of 796 global institutions for reduced inequalities in the Times Higher Impact ratings – this recognises our research on social inequalities, policies on discrimination and commitment to recruitment staff and students from underrepresented groups.**

World-leading

  • We are in the top 50 UK universities for research power, and nearly two-thirds of our research environment is classified as world-leading and internationally excellent.***

As a researcher, you’ll gain access to our Researcher Skills Development Programme through The Graduate School, to help broaden your knowledge and access tools and skills to improve your employability. The programme is mapped against Vitae’s Researcher Development Framework (RDF), you’ll benefit from Vitae’s career support as well as our own programme. We also have a team dedicated to improving the academic English needed for research by our international PGRs.

Our training is delivered in a variety of ways to take advantage of online platforms as well as face-to-face workshops and courses. You can access a range of bespoke training opportunities and in-person events that are tailored to each stage of your journey;

  • Sessions on PhD thesis writing, publications and journals, post-doctoral opportunities, poster and conference presentations, networking, and international travel opportunities.

  • Opportunity to work and study abroad via the Turing Scheme through The Graduate School.

  • Externally accredited training programme with Advance HE (HEA) and CMI.

  • Online research training support accessed through a dedicated researcher module in Brightspace, the University’s Virtual Learning Environment.

  • We also hold a series of PGR focussed events such as 3 Minute Thesis, PGR led research conference and informal events throughout the year.

**THE Impact Rankings 2022

*** REF2021

Important information

We will always try to deliver your course as described on this web page. However, sometimes we may have to make changes as set out below.

When you are offered a place on a research degree, your offer will include confirmation of your supervisory team, and the topic you will be researching.

Whilst the University will use reasonable efforts to ensure your supervisory team remains the same, sometimes it may be necessary to make changes to your team for reasons outside the University’s control, for example if your supervisor leaves the University, or suffers from long term illness. Where this is the case, we will discuss these difficulties with you and seek to either put in place a new supervisory team, or help you to transfer to another research facility, in accordance with our Student Protection Plan.

Changes may also be necessary because of circumstances outside our reasonable control, for example the University being unable to access its buildings due to fire, flood or pandemic, or the University no longer being able to provide specialist equipment. Where this is the case, we will discuss these issues with you and agree any necessary changes.

Your research project is likely to evolve as you work on it and these minor changes are a natural and expected part of your study. However, we may need to make more significant changes to your topic of research during the course of your studies, either because your area of interest has changed, or because for reasons outside the University’s control we can no longer support your research. If this is the case, we will discuss any changes in topic with you and agree these in writing. If you are an international student, changing topics may affect your visa or ATAS clearance and if this is the case we will discuss this with you before any changes are agreed.

When you enrol as a student of the University, your study and time with us will be governed by the University’s Terms and Conditions and a framework of regulations, policies and procedures, which form the basis of your agreement with us. It is important that you familiarise yourself with these as you will be asked to agree to abide by them when you join us as a student. You will find a guide to the key terms here, along with the Student Protection Plan, where you will also find links to the full text of each of the regulations, policies and procedures referred to.

The Office for Students (OfS) is the principal regulator for the University.