About the Project
Project Ref: PHDBU1701. UK Medical Schools are a unique place for undergraduate education, health-related research, and a critical interface with the health service and postgraduate education and training. Their mission is to support its stakeholders to optimise the quality of the myriad activities undertaken within the UK’s medical schools. However, NHS shortages of staff seem to be an everyday fact of life or at least a factor mentioned in several news stories each week. (BBC, October, 2016). There are new plans to increase the number of medical school places will increase by 25% from 2018 so that more students with the skills to become doctors would be able to do so. Courses are set to start in September 2018. Conversely, published figures show that for example in 2015, there were 82,034 applicants fighting for 7,424 places to study medicine in the UK. Therefore, this can be interpreted in accounting language as a lack of adequate disclosure on the necessary skills required to obtain a place in a medical school. Thus, the aim of increasing medical school places may not be a simple matter of increasing student numbers.
The International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) define integrated reporting as “... a concise communication about how organizations’ strategy, governance, performance and prospects lead to creating value over short, medium and long term (IIRC, 2011, p. 2). ” Since the publication of IR framework, a number of academic studies (Eccles and Krzus, 2010; Solomon and Maroun, 2012; Draguand Tudor, 2013; Abeysekera, 2013; Cheng et al., 2014; Tweedie & Bennie, 2015 and Mio et al., 2016) have generally focused on the necessity of IR adoption as one report; the relation between IR and social, environmental and ethical company reports; the IR framework template; the IR framework key issues and future research including analysis of the literature review of integrated reporting. However, most of these studies have focused on a specific industry or mixed industries and there is a lack of studies that focus on Medical Schools.
The main objective of this study is to understand the extent to which Medical Schools meet the requirements of Integrated Reporting; whether Medical Schools provide full disclosure on the necessary skills required to potential applicants; and whether current courses available for potential applicants allow sufficient opportunities to acquire such skills. We would also identify the ways in which Medical Schools can embed further the guiding principles and content elements of Integrated Reporting in order to further enhance medical training.
Funding Notes
UWS is an inspiring, vibrant place to study with a growing research community; an important aspect of which is its outstanding and committed research students.
Successful candidates will receive an annual stipend (currently £14,553) per annum for three years and payment of tuition fees (current value £4200). Applicants are advised that funding will be considered as part of a competitive round and there is no guarantee that it will be awarded. Successful applicants will be expected to contribute up to 6 hours/week to UWS’ academic related activities.
References
Studentships are open to Home/EU candidates with a first degree in a relevant discipline. Non-EU students can apply, but will not receive the stipend and will be required to pay fees.
How to apply:
Postgraduate Degree by Research Applications should be completed online at
http://www.uws.ac.uk/research/graduate-school/prospective-students/
Applications without all relevant documents will not be considered. Please quote the Project Reference Number.