Early Post-Doctoral Researcher – Hospital Workforce and Service Delivery at KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP)

JOB PURPOSE: 

We have an exciting opportunity for someone to contribute to research at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP), a leading research centre in Africa dedicated to investigating the primary causes of ill health and the development of health care systems on the continent. At KWTRP, we are not only committed to advancing scientific knowledge but also to fostering local research leadership.

In a new project, the Health Services Unit at KWTRP Nairobi is collaborating with researchers at Oxford University and elsewhere to explore how County / Sub-County Hospitals in Kenya and District Hospitals in Uganda and South Africa might best support Universal Health Coverage in the future. This work is termed Africa’s First Referral Hospitals: Innovation and Care (AFRHiCARE) Partnership. The proposed research will focus especially on the roles and development of the hospital workforce and key types of professionals (doctors, nurses, clinical officers, pharmacists and allied health professionals), how the workforce is managed and the effects this has on hospital culture, worker performance and well-being, and how technologies are re-shaping services and the work health professionals do.

The Post-Doctoral Research Assistant would join a senior, cross-national team and so will have both management and scientific roles as outlined below.

We expect the work may be of interest to those with different disciplinary backgrounds as there is scope to shape a person specific area of work and/or transition to work on health services / health workforce research for an excellent candidate who has developed their research skills in a different field . For example, applicants might have a PhD in areas such as: epidemiology; public health / health systems; (health) economics; or social science.

The new Post-Doctoral Research Assistant position will be within the Health Services Unit of the KWTRP in Nairobi and they will get supervision and support from PIs and others in the AFRHiCARE team. The AFHRiCARE Partnership is a collaborative effort between these well-established researchers from KWTRP in Kenya and the Universities of Oxford, Witwatersrand, and Makerere. AFHRiCARE is funded by Wellcome as a 5-year partnership to generate new evidence that will inform the roles, workforce requirements, skill-mix, and use of technologies needed to deliver high-quality healthcare as part of Universal Health Coverage.

We welcome applications from those wishing to develop their career in health services / health systems research and who wish to make a meaningful impact on healthcare in Africa as part of a dynamic research environment in Kenya that is linked to a wider network of scientific excellence.

Description: 

REPORTS TO: Study PIs

DIRECT REPORTS: Research Assistants; Assistant Research Officers; Fieldworkers

INDIRECT REPORTS: None

BUDGET AND RESOURCE RESPONSIBILITY: 

Responsible for allocated hardware and software

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

In the scientific arena the person would:

• Work as the lead scientist in Kenya in partnership with Oxford, Uganda and South Africa and be expected to help develop, conduct and report on a specific set of research objectives. This is likely to include writing specific ethics submissions, developing / refining survey data collection tools, collecting data themselves as part of fieldwork, supervising research assistants, ensuring high quality data are collected, analysing survey data and possibly complementary qualitative data and writing first-author publications. Topic areas might include, as examples, but to be discussed with the wider team surveys or mixed methods studies on:
  • Health worker well-being or satisfaction with their work
  • Team work within and across departments of a hospital
  • Organisational culture or psychological safety
  • Staff absenteeism, recruitment, retention and rotation
• Bring advanced analytical skills to the research partnership in the form of quantitative (statistical) or mixed methods skills that include quantitative skills, allowing them to conduct analyses largely independently while collaborating with other post-doctoral or senior scientists
• Be able to effectively communicate their research to different audiences in the form of presentations, talks, publications and other written outputs including as appropriate for websites and social media platforms
• Ensure the ethical conduct of research and foster an inclusive and supportive research culture
• Have the capability and inter-personal skills to provide effective supervision to junior researchers who are learning new methods or developing their research careers – where appropriate this could include co-supervision of PhD students

In their wider research team roles the person would:

• Engage and communicate effectively with different stakeholders; for example in the Ministry of Health at national and county levels, with hospital management and hospital teams, with patients and communities as part of research management roles
• Co-manage a programme wide work-stream that will likely involve Uganda, South Africa and Oxford that will include scheduling, preparing for, and chairing online and face to face meetings and ensuring that key action points are captured and that timely action is taken by the named responsible person
• Plan, budget and oversee research activities with operations colleagues so that the Nairobi based research team and temporary research teams involved in data collection in different parts of Kenya achieve the research objectives
• Coordinate the work of a small team in Nairobi working as part of the broader cross-national AFRHiCARE team – this may involve coordinating research work that they are not specifically focused on themselves but that is part of meeting broader, programme wide objectives
• Contribute to the wider research citizenship activities of the group such as attending and making active contributions to seminars, journal clubs and other scientific discussions

QUALIFICATIONS:

The successful applicant will have:

• PhD (completed or in submission) in a relevant topic / field demonstrating strong quantitative, or mixed-methods research skills
• Evidence of academic excellence based on performance in the primary degree, MSc/MPH and PhD
• Demonstrated experience in planning and undertaking document or scientific literature reviews
• Demonstrated experience in planning for and collecting, analysing and interpreting quantitative or qualitative data.
• Demonstrated ability to conduct and manage field data collection including the supervision of research assistants and data quality assurance so that high quality data is produced
• Demonstrated ability in high level stakeholder engagement, ideally in Kenya eg. with governments, INGOs, or healthcare organisations and in working with organisational leaders and teams
• Proficiency in one or more statistical packages ideally ‘R’ or in use of qualitative analysis software such as NVivo
• Highly developed oral and written communication skills
• Experience in undertaking research with multiple collaborators and in a cross-cultural context with demonstrated ability to coordinate different activities and people to achieve results
• A record of publishing and presenting research results relative to career stage and opportunity.
• Demonstrated interest in health systems / services; knowledge and working experience of the Kenyan Health system an added advantage.
• Demonstrated ability to act with sound judgement, sensitivity, and flexibility, and to exercise initiative in adapting preferred approaches when and where required
• It is desirable that the person:
  • Has prior experience with research on the health workforce
  • Has experience of multi-country research collaboration
  • Has experience of supervising the analyses and report writing of more junior research team members
  • Has an interest in contributing to teaching and training of research methods

COMPETENCIES:

• Capability to do policy and scientific literature reviews including use of specific search strategies and reference management software.
• Experience in developing an analytic plan and collating, analysing and interpreting quantitative data (ideally experience of mixed methods including quantitative data)
• Experience of working with health service managers
• Experience in use of quantitative analytical software, either R or STATA (abiity to use qualitative data analysis software n added advantage).
• Excellent range of skills across the MS Office suite
• Have high energy, clear goal orientation and a strong work ethic.
• Strong organisation/programme management skills with the ability to prioritise workloads and work within tight deadlines
• Ability to write clearly for a scientific audience and to present clearly to non-academic audiences
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a team environment and to multi-task
• Ability to travel within Kenya to remote areas and reside for periods required to collect data or provide supervision
• Ideally the person would be able to travel internationally as part of the multi-country partnership

PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT/CONDITIONS:

• Office-based
• This position will be based in Nairobi with the potential for some travel to Kenyan hospitals and some international travel as needed