Research Assistant

The University of Surrey is a global university with a world-class research profile and an enterprising spirit. Inventive and forward-thinking, its heritage shows a recurring theme of going its own way, doing things differently – and achieving notable results.  Furthermore, the University of Surrey regularly ranks as one of the top UK universities across a variety of league tables. The School of Economics at Surrey (www.surrey.ac.uk/economics) has a reputation for Research and Teaching in Economics, built upon a commitment to high quality, rigorously founded applied and theoretical work, often of direct policy significance. The School enjoys a strong research profile, exemplified by very successful 2021 REF scores. We have recently invested heavily to recruit staff whose innovative work is having a large impact on international research agendas.

The School of Economics is seeking to appoint a Research Fellow to work on a project funded by The Health Foundation “Retention of clinical workforce in English NHS hospitals: variations, trends and effects on patient outcomes”.

This project is motivated by the observation that a decade of austerity has led to negative effects on the working conditions of the NHS’s large workforce and the ‘haemorrhaging’ of some groups of permanent healthcare staff. These positions must be covered by temporary staff at higher cost or left unfilled to the detriment of patient care.  The importance of the medical workforce has of course been brought into even sharper relief by the COVID pandemic.

The project is ongoing and uses large scale micro-economic data to investigate two questions: What are the determinants of variations in NHS workforce retention, in both acute care and mental health hospitals? What are the impacts of poor workforce retention on patient’s health outcomes?

Our results are important for understanding the impact of lowering NHS staff turnover and for identifying policies that NHS employers and other policy makers can use to effectively improve turnover.

This position would be suitable for the holder of a recently-completed PhD, or a PhD candidate in their final year before expected graduation, with expertise in health and labour economics or applied econometrics. The successful candidate will have considerable experience of data management and analysis using Stata, possibly some experience in R programming, and an interest in using research to shape policy. The appointment will be on a fixed term, 0.8 FTE basis from start of October 2023 until the project ends July 2024.

Research Fellows will be expected to work with the PI and others in the School to contribute to high quality (3-4* REF) outputs as well as contribute to the interim and final reports, and project meetings.

The project budget includes funds to cover research expenses and to attend local and international conferences and seminars to disseminate research findings.

For further information about the School of Economics and its Applied Microeconomics group see

https://www.surrey.ac.uk/school-economics/research/applied-microeconomics-group

For an informal discussion regarding this position, please contact Dr Giuseppe Moscelli via email G.Moscelli@surrey.ac.uk 

Further details:   

For more information and to apply online, please download the further details and click on the 'apply online' button above.
 

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