Doctor of Professional Practice in Health and Social Care Welcome Pack
Welcome to Welcome to the Doctor of Professional Practice in Health and Social Care 2024.
Welcome to the Doctor of Professional Practice (DProfPrac) in Health and Social Care! In this programme, we will work together in developing your skills and confidence from wherever you are on your research journey, towards becoming an independent researcher who delivers research with much potential for impact. You will learn through small cohort sessions with a dedicated programme team in your first two years of study with one-to-one tutorials and online resources. In years three-six you will work with a specialist supervisory team to design and deliver your own independent research project, leading to a doctoral thesis.
Your Programme Leader
Dr Michelle Pyer
Associate Professor, Child and Family Wellbeing
PGR Lead (Health and Society), Faculty of Health, Education and Society
michelle.pyer@northampton.ac.uk
Supporting you before you arrive
We know that you may have questions (and maybe some worries) about starting your research degree. Please email Michelle as often as you need with these queries – doing so will help us to build a bank of information that we can share with other students too.
Equipment
Most of the resources you will need for your learning are available through Library and Learning Services or your programme team. At times – particularly during the thesis stage of your programme – you may need access to equipment. Your faculty has a supply of frequently used items such as dictaphones that you can borrow. You may need to source more technical items for yourself – please factor this into your planning for the cost of the course.
Enhancing skills, building networks and engaging in the wider University community
We are keen to offer you opportunities to develop your skills, and to engage with the wider University Community. Students can do this in a range of ways, for example:
We encourage students on the programme to engage with one or more of the University’s research centres. The most relevant centres to students on this programme are: Centre for Health Sciences and Services, Centre for Psychological and Sociological Sciences, and the Northamptonshire Dementia Research and Innovation Centre. You can find more information about the Centres, and the University’s Research Institutes on the website.
Current PGR students – where opportunities arise – can act as Research Assistants within funded research projects. Students on the DProf are usually in years 3-6 of their programme before taking on these opportunities.
Where students want to develop their teaching experience, we seek to identify any available opportunities. This might be in relation to supervising student dissertations, marking student work or delivering lectures or seminars. We will discuss this with you as you progress on the programme.