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  1. Universities, the NHS, and health workforce transformation

    February 5, 2024

    This article was originally published in Wonkhe. Working alongside the NHS requires universities to constantly be adapting. The relationship between universities and the health and social care sector can be described as evolutionary. For decades, nurses were trained directly on wards, with schools of nursing traditionally hosted by individual hospitals. Training began to move towards higher education in the mid-1990s, but it took until 2009 for a…

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  2. How Professional Doctorates are empowering nurses and midwives to lead

    November 15, 2023

    In our latest ‘Innovators’ blog, Dr Helen Aveyard writes about how Oxford Brookes University are empowering nurses and midwives to become researchers. “In 2021, The Chief Nursing Officer for England, Ruth May, published the Strategic Plan for Research which outlines the intention to ‘create a research environment that empowers nurses to lead, participate in and deliver research, where research is fully embedded in practice and professional decisi…

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    Helen Aveyard

  3. Delivering one of the world’s first Degree Apprenticeships in Midwifery

    July 17, 2023

    Professional and technical universities educate approximately 1 in 3 midwives and specialise in innovative provision such as degree apprenticeships. In our latest ‘Innovators’ blog, Sue Lawrence, Senior Lecturer in Midwifery at the University of Greenwich writes about how her institution innovated by developing one of the country’s first degree apprenticeships in Midwifery. “Back in 2019, the University of Greenwich was one of three pilot sites s…

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    Sue Lawrence

  4. Collaboration will be key in delivering the NHS Workforce Plan

    July 5, 2023

    Today (5 July) marks the 75th anniversary of the National Health Service. With the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan announced last week, Dr Denise Baker, Pro Vice-Chancellor Dean of the College of Health, Psychology and Social Care at the University of Derby, and Chair of the University Alliance Deans of Health Group, discusses what measures are needed to ensure the longevity of the NHS. The long awaited and much overdue NHS workforce plan has finall…

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    Dr Denise Baker

  5. “We need to highlight how rewarding a career in health can be”

    May 23, 2023

    Professor Ross Renton, Principal at ARU Peterborough writes about his institution’s approach to developing a skilled healthcare workforce for local needs. Skills needs ARU Peterborough as an institution has been specifically designed to target local skills needs, co-creating the curriculum with employers. That crosses a wealth of areas in the sciences, business and engineering, but it is especially true in healthcare. We’re meeting the needs of o…

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    Ross Renton

  6. Four reasons why Universities should be at the heart of the NHS Long-Term Workforce Plan

    March 22, 2023

    Dr Denise Baker, Chair of the Deans of Health Network at University Alliance, comments on how universities can help the Government and the NHS deliver the health and social care workforce of the future. “We know that many of the issues the NHS currently faces are workforce-related. There are 130,000 vacancies in England, 46,000 of which are nursing posts. Even if the Government meets its manifesto pledge of 50,000 more nurses, there remain well-d…

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    Dr Denise Baker

  7. Addressing a lost opportunity in the NHS workforce crisis: higher education’s future role in clinical placement management

    August 5, 2021

    This blog first appeared in HEPI on 3 August 2021 The National Health Service is enjoying a unique moment in its 73 year-old history as its value is brought into sharp focus by the COVID pandemic. After months of weekly doorstep claps for NHS workers and NHS rainbows – a once ubiquitous sight on British streets – it is perhaps not surprising that healthcare has become a more visible and desirable career choice. Applications to healthcare courses …

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  8. High tech facilities at Alliance universities are helping to power the NHS

    July 16, 2021

    University Alliance institutions are at the forefront of training the UK’s future health and social care workforce, training 25% of all nursing and midwifery students and 18% of all social work students. This is due in large part to the superb learning and training provision afforded by our universities’ high tech facilities. Allowing students to train in an immersive environment, using equipment and techniques that they would encounter once they…

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  9. How volunteering for the NHS helped me become a pandemic-resilient PGR (and introduced me to the Queen!)

    June 10, 2021

    As a doctoral researcher, I found myself in a lonely place at the beginning of the pandemic, wallowing in self-pity about the impact the pandemic was having on my research, including the struggles of studying at home as a parent. As a DTA researcher, I had imagined that I was future-proofed for any disruption to my daily schedule; that somehow, I could always bounce back resiliently. In January 2020, I had just started data collection, and it was…

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  10. Polling the public to inform our strategic planning to the recovery response

    June 12, 2020

    The coronavirus pandemic has touched just about every aspect of our lives and it is certain that we will witness lasting economic, social, cultural and health implications for decades to come. With every political and policy agenda item now being addressed through this lens, we must be prepared to reframe our work to speak to this ‘new normal’. It was against this backdrop and amidst preparations for the looming emergency budget that we commissio…

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    Vanessa Wilson CEO