King's College London

About us:

The post will be based in the Centre for Mental Health and Policy Evaluation (CMHPE). The Centre focuses on assessing the effectiveness and implementation of policies, services and population level interventions, primarily in relation to mental health. It aims to contribute to the advancement of methods for evaluation and implementation science and supports the capacity building work of NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) South London.

The Centre is based in the Department of Health Service & Population Research (HSPR). Its main goal is to conduct world-leading research and education using the social and health sciences to better understand and to improve health outcomes, systems, and care, both locally and globally, particularly in disadvantaged and marginalised populations.

About the role:

Keeping patients safe is essential to our National Health Service, but there are many examples of patients being harmed. Evidence indicates that some groups such as racially minoritised groups, people with mental health challenges or those with learning disabilities are more likely to experience healthcare harm. There is much interest amongst researchers and healthcare professionals about improving patient safety, but methods to do this have often not been developed with groups more likely to be harmed. 

This is an exciting opportunity for a Research Assistant to support the administration of a mixed methods research study which will focus on co-producing a broader patient centred knowledge framework for the evaluation of medical harm and risk with diverse groups of harmed patients to improve decision-making in patient safety in the future.

You will report to Dr Josephine Ocloo, the project lead, and your role will be to support the day to day running of the project (e.g. organising and attending research meetings, taking notes, circulating agendas, setting up and convening meetings and supporting the wider research team with data collection and analysis). You will be supported to submit an ethics application for the study. A key aspect of this post will be for you to support meaningful and coordinated coproduction with patient and public members and groups.  

This is a full-time post (35 Hours per week), and you will be offered a fixed term contract until 1st June 2027. The expectation is that you will spend at least 2 days per week in the office.

About you:

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

1. A degree-level qualification at undergraduate level
2. Experience of working with researchers from a diversity of backgrounds, including public members/researchers with expertise (lived experience) from being on the receiving end of health services.
3. Experience of working sensitively and collaboratively with lived experience researchers/public members in research.
4. Experience of drafting study protocols and preparing/submitting documents for ethics approvals.
5. Experience of drafting study documents as part of research studies.
6. Experience of working with research projects and supporting the process of recruitment, data collection, analysis of data and write-up.
7. Excellent organisational and time management skills.

Desirable criteria

1. Knowledge of models of co-production in healthcare and working collaboratively and/or with peer researchers as part of a research team.
2. Knowledge of different types of discrimination and how this can impact different groups in healthcare and research.
3. Knowledge of patient safety and healthcare harm and how this can operate in healthcare processes with different groups.

Downloading a copy of our Job Description

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the next page after you click “Apply Now”. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

Further information:

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the advert. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our ‘How we Recruit’ pages.

Interview date/s TBC.