PhD Position Systems Science for Sustainable Safety

Passionate about improving healthcare by using systems science methods? Join the Institute for Health Systems Science (IHSS) and work alongside leading experts from various disciplines to advance innovation in healthcare resilience and safety! We're seeking a skilled PhD candidate to optimize professional and organizational responsibility for safer care.

Job description

At the Institute for Health Systems Science (IHSS) at the faculty of Technology, Policy and Management (TPM), a PhD position will become available dedicated to responsibility in healthcare systems in relation to safe care.

The IHSS is a recently established TPM initiative that has a mission to explore and promote systems science methods in Health & Care to enable safe and sustainable health & care for all. It is increasingly recognized that complex challenges, such as safety and resilience, are best approached from a systems perspective. In healthcare, systems science is as yet underexplored and has significant potential to address its longstanding complex challenges. The IHSS leverages on the faculty’s long-standing record in a.o. complex systems science and resilience, integration of ethics and values in sociotechnical systems and systems engineering and design. The position will be based within the Centre for Safety in Healthcare (CSH) that is positioned within the section Safety and Security Science (3S). As the IHSS operates faculty wide, you will work with experts from different sections and departments in the faculty, including systems engineers, psychologists, philosophers and others.

This PhD trajectory will focus on the role of professional and organisational responsibility towards ensuring safe care. It will consider individual professional performance and professional views on safe care as related to the healthcare system design and performance (as a sociotechnical system). For instance, the question how responsibilities are distributed within the healthcare systems, whether and where responsibility vacuums exist, and what the consequences are or may be. This includes formal responsibilities (as secured in regulations and laws and embedded within the organisation) and ‘informal’ responsibility (such as found within professional norms). Successively the aim is to answer the question what -in terms of responsibilities- is needed to secure safe care. While we are interested in these topics broadly, we consider a focus one of the following (use) cases: acute care, mental health, or cancer care.

Requirements

We are looking for a PhD candidate:

• With a background in systems engineering, clinical technology, health (technology) management or a related discipline.
• Knowledge of, or demonstrable interest in the healthcare domain.
• Preferably an additional degree or strong interest in philosophy.
• Who has basic knowledge on scientific methods to study complex challenges.
• Professional proficiency in English (mandatory).
• Professional proficiency in Dutch language (mandatory).

Doing a PhD at TU Delft requires English proficiency at a certain level to ensure that the candidate is able to communicate and interact well, participate in English-taught Doctoral Education courses, and write scientific articles and a final thesis.

Conditions of employment

Doctoral candidates will be offered a 4-year period of employment in principle, but in the form of 2 employment contracts. An initial 1,5 year contract with an official go/no go progress assessment within 15 months. Followed by an additional contract for the remaining 2,5 years assuming everything goes well and performance requirements are met.

Salary and benefits are in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities, increasing from € 2770 per month in the first year to € 3539 in the fourth year. As a PhD candidate you will be enrolled in the TU Delft Graduate School. The TU Delft Graduate School provides an inspiring research environment with an excellent team of supervisors, academic staff and a mentor. The Doctoral Education Programme is aimed at developing your transferable, discipline-related and research skills.

The TU Delft offers a customisable compensation package, discounts on health insurance, and a monthly work costs contribution. Flexible work schedules can be arranged.

For international applicants, TU Delft has the Coming to Delft Service. This service provides information for new international employees to help you prepare the relocation and to settle in the Netherlands. The Coming to Delft Service offers a Dual Career Programme for partners and they organise events to expand your (social) network.

TU Delft (Delft University of Technology)

Delft University of Technology is built on strong foundations. As creators of the world-famous Dutch waterworks and pioneers in biotech, TU Delft is a top international university combining science, engineering and design. It delivers world class results in education, research and innovation to address challenges in the areas of energy, climate, mobility, health and digital society. For generations, our engineers have proven to be entrepreneurial problem-solvers, both in business and in a social context.

At TU Delft we embrace diversity as one of our core values and we actively engage to be a university where you feel at home and can flourish. We value different perspectives and qualities. We believe this makes our work more innovative, the TU Delft community more vibrant and the world more just. Together, we imagine, invent and create solutions using technology to have a positive impact on a global scale. That is why we invite you to apply. Your application will receive fair consideration.

Challenge. Change. Impact!

Faculty Technology, Policy and Management

The Faculty of TPM provides an important contribution to solving complex technical-social issues, such as energy transition, mobility, digitalisation, water management and (cyber) security. TPM does this with its excellent education and research at the intersection of technology, society and policy. We combine insights from both engineering and social sciences as well as the humanities. TPM develops robust models and designs, is internationally oriented and has an extensive network of knowledge institutions, companies, social organisations and governments.