Radiography student at work

School of Health and Care Professions

Explore the teaching and research activities taking place within our School of Health and Care Professions

The School of Health and Care Professions offers exceptional health and social care education to meet the current and future needs of the health and social care sectors.

The population of the United Kingdom will hit 74 million by 2039 (Office for National Statistics), so it's essential to develop a larger caring workforce – of doctors, social workers, paramedics, dental nurses, mental health nurses, radiographers, biomedical scientists and pharmacists.

Teaching

Our undergraduate and postgraduate degrees cover all major aspects of healthcare, and provide an educational platform that bridges the gap between science and application – so our students graduate with the skills required to succeed, and an understanding of how to use them.

We follow the core values of the NHS and offer professional doctorates in a range of health and social care disciplines – many of which are endorsed by Skills For Care, a national organisation for workforce development in social care.

We also offer courses that make our students eligible for registration with other professional bodies – such as the Health Care Professions – and we've received funding from the Health Education England, Newton Foundation, Medical Research Council and the largest national clinical research funder in Europe, The National Institute for Health Research.

Our teaching areas

To see all the undergraduate and postgraduate degrees we offer, visit our healthcare and social care subject area page. We also offer short courses and continuing professional development courses that cover all aspects of the health and social care.

Facilities

Our undergraduate and postgraduate students use our Centre for Simulation in Health and Care (CSH&C) facility to develop their diagnostic, clinical assessment, clinical decision-making and leadership skills through practical experience and guidance.

We're also home to a realistic operating theatre with human patient simulators, a clinical skills laboratory, a digital x-ray suite and a dedicated ultrasound room.

Dr Jason Oakley – School of Health and Care Professions – University of Portsmouth

Dr Jason Oakley, Head of the School of Health and Care Professions at the University of Portsmouth, describes the variety of courses on offer within the school, as well as the teaching, facilities, technology and placement opportunities available to students.

Dr Jason Oakley: My name is Jason Oakley and I'm the Head of School of the School of Health and Care Professions.

The School of Health and Care Professions is a school that encompasses a really wide range of professions that work both in the health and the social sector. So, for example, we train paramedics, nurses and both in adult mental health. We train radiographers, we have operating department practitioners and we have Physician Associates, as well as social workers. So we really do cover a really wide range of professional groups that will contribute both to health and social care.

A really fundamental part of these courses is the staff on them, in the main, are practitioners themselves. So these are people that have the same qualifications. They've been there, they've worked in the hospitals, and some will still do. They're there to support the students, both in their academic time here at the university, and that will be through pastoral support as well as academic support but also they're there to support them when they go into placement. So the actual staff are a really fundamental part of the experience for our students.

At the University of Portsmouth, we have all the normal facilities you'd expect from a university but we also have some of the most fantastic, what we call, simulation facilities. So these are areas which try to simulate what it will be like when you actually are there in a hospital. So we have ward areas, we have an operating theatre, we have an X-ray room. We have flats where you can just experience what it's like to be in somebody else's home. So we have a really wide range of facilities that allow us to actually give you an experience of what it's like.

But within some of those areas, we actually also have a lot of technology and that technology is there to make it seem very, very real. The training of our students during this time is just so important because they are the workforce of the future. It's about immersing you in all that simulated reality before you actually go out into work with real patients and real service users.

All of our courses will come with placement opportunities. They're absolutely essential. They're how you fill the requirements of the professional regulators but also how you begin to build up your experience, build up your knowledge over the period of your course to be able to give the best care, the best service to the patients and the service users that we work with.

Like most of the staff I'm actually from an NHS background myself and I'm a radiographer by profession. It makes me so proud to be part of the team that are training the workforce of the future. That's our students going through their training and getting ready to go out and become the carers of the future, working in both health and social care. So for me, this is just a fantastic job to do and it's reflected by the fantastic students that we have that then go on to work in these careers. 

Mass casualty simulated experiences | University of Portsmouth

Discover how the School of Health and Care Professions at the University of Portsmouth uses mass casualty simulated experiences to support its teaching. These events enhance the learning of students and conduct research into the processes of healthcare providers as well as using simulated patient experience to teach empathy to nursing students

Hazel

The simulation centre is as close as you can get to an actual ward. It's just a safe place to practice your skills that enable you to become the best you can be at what you want to do.

 

Laura Knight

SimEx is a simulated mass casualty event. It takes place all over the greater Portsmouth area, with multiple exercises going on with multiple students involved and multiple agencies as well and it just allows not only hospital environments, but also disaster response environments to be able to test their mass casualty processes and protocols to make sure that we deal with it in the best way that we possibly can.

 

Sarah Herbert

The event today was based on a traffic accident. We've got actors playing the parts of patients, various injuries, some relatively minor, up to some pretty serious stuff and unfortunately, a few people that didn't make it.

 

Laura Knight

Last year we did one day full of adult casualties. This year, we've doubled the days up and we've added a paediatric element in which allows QA and our students to be able to prepare themselves if the worst ever happened and we did have a lot of children needing attention medically at any one time.

 

Melanie Tanner

It's a really rare opportunity to be involved in something that's in such big scale, as in SimEx. The students, of course, do have placements. They have to do 2300 hours, be put on the register to be a nurse. But to get this experience with this mass casualty situation would be very, very rare for them.

 

Laura Knight

A lot of the time, students have to take a bit of a backseat role when stuff like this comes in during clinical placements. Being able to do it in a controlled environment allows the students to be able to practice their skills that they're going to have to be doing when they qualify and when they come across a major incident in real life.

 

Melanie Tanner

By seeing this and working together with the QA team here now, they are getting such valuable learning experience and if they ever have to deal with this in the future, it will allow them to be more confident and competent practitioners.

 

Makaylia

I believe that getting this experience as a student opens my eyes to what actually happens in the real world. I feel like I've had the experience where I can implement those skills into anything that I come across.

 

Hazel

There are so many different aspects of the multidisciplinary team within the hospital setting and being able to understand each other's roles and communicate with each other and work together is what optimises patient outcomes.

 

Makaylia

This will help me in my future career because of all the experience that I've gained and an insight of what it's like to work with different types of teams, for example, doctors, consultants and other nurses. It's good for communication and teamwork.
 

Melanie Tanner

20 of my student nurses I've directed up to Tipner. They're going to be involved in a humanitarian exercise and they will be working with the crisis and management team. The idea is by putting student nurses in those roles is they get to see what it's like to be on the other side, to feel vulnerable, to feel empathy for that person in that situation.

 

Debbi Atkinson

It's about recognising the roles of others, seeing the impacts that they can have and I think its just about taking those transferable skills that our students have and putting it into a different situation.

 

Steve Searby

Nursing isn't a traditional, ward based approach. Some of the students here could go on and work for international aid agencies. It is really important that they have an awareness of the kind of pressures that they could be involved in.

 

Phil Crook

There's negotiations that have to be undertaken with local important people. There's interviews with the media to show off their organisation and develop relationships. They face a series of other challenges, such as passing checkpoints and to access and assess a particular location as to its suitability to develop into a refugee camp or camp for internally displaced people. The better we can make that experience now, the better equipped they'll be when they go into that world in the future.

 

SimEx allows us to offer an exercise environment to other organisations, external to the university such as voluntary organisations, sometimes local authority, emergency responders, United Nations organisations, civil protection organisations from around the world and then sat behind all of that, because we're a university, there's a huge amount of research that goes on.

 

Melanie Tanner

This experience will really help the students in their future careers. It will really make them feel safe, confident and competent going forward. If it becomes a reality, which we do have major casualty incidents, then they will feel more confident as a team all together to work together and hopefully get a better outcome for everyone in our community.

 

Research

Our research was submitted to the Research Excellence Framework 2021 (REF 2021) in Unit of Assessment 3 (Allied Health Professions, Dentistry, Nursing and Pharmacy). 90% of this research rated as world-leading or internationally excellent in terms of originality, significance and rigour and 100% of the Impact Case Studies were rated as very considerable in terms of their reach and significance.

Explore the research we're doing across the 3 areas of expertise within our Health and Care Professions research – including our most recent projects, funders and more.

Our research centres

Much of our exceptional research takes place within the following cross-disciplinary research centres – find out more below.

Global Health, Population and Policy Research Group

We're carrying out research that promotes population health while achieving health related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Our staff

View all staff

Jason Nathaniel Oakley Portrait

Dr Jason Oakley

Head of School

Jason.Oakley@port.ac.uk

School of Health and Care Professions

Faculty of Science and Health

PhD Supervisor

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Helen Anne Sewell Portrait

Ms Helen Sewell

Programme Lead (SWE)

helen.sewell@port.ac.uk

School of Health and Care Professions

Faculty of Science and Health

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Christopher Wells Portrait

Mr Chris Wells

Programme lead (HCPC)

Chris.Wells@port.ac.uk

School of Health and Care Professions

Faculty of Science and Health

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Mrs Pauline McKeever

Associate Head (Global Engagement and Education Partnerships)

pauline.mckeever@port.ac.uk

School of Health and Care Professions

Faculty of Science and Health

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Explore our faculty

Explore the other Schools and Departments that make up our Faculty of Science and Health.

School of Biological Sciences

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Dental Academy

The Dental Academy is a modern, primary-care based school that trains General Dental Council-registered and qualified dental care professionals, and offers comprehensive oral and dental healthcare to the public.

Dental Academy photoshoot, 14th November 2018
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School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences

Through our teaching and research, the School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences strives to find new ways to help those with debilitating illnesses and diseases.

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School of Sport, Health and Exercise Science

We study the physiology, psychology and biomechanics of the human body during exercise and its application to sports performance and health. 

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Department of Psychology

Explore the Department of Psychology at the University of Portsmouth, and learn more about the teaching and research activities happening within the department.

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Faculty of Science and Health

Explore the Faculty of Science and Health at the University of Portsmouth, and learn more about the teaching and research activities that take place within the Faculty's different departments and schools.

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Contact us

To get in touch, please contact our Faculty office.

+44 (0)23 9284 2994

sci-enquiries@port.ac.uk