Have you completed – or are you about to complete – a Master’s degree in the social sciences? And would you like to get a PhD in a place that conducts scientific research on challenges currently faced in healthcare governance, whilst being closely connected to everyday healthcare practice and simultaneously trying to deepen its theoretical basis? The Healthcare Governance (HCG) department of the Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management (ESHPM) is looking for a highly motivated PhD student who wishes to conduct ethnographic research on timely access to good quality healthcare in times of staffing shortages. Your research project will focus specifically on the political and ethical dilemmas encountered on a daily basis by healthcare providers on the work floor.

Job description
It is becoming more difficult to organize and guarantee timely access to good quality healthcare in the Netherlands due to staffing shortages and increasingly complex healthcare needs. In this context, healthcare providers need to deal with growing waiting lists and try to provide care to as many patients as possible with limited time and resources at their disposal. This means that they need to make painful decisions on a daily basis as to who to provide care to, transfer to others or strategically ignore. Healthcare professionals increasingly struggle with the practical, professional and ethical dilemmas involved in these decisions.

In this doctoral research project, you will focus on the daily considerations and choices made by healthcare providers in the context of scarcity; choices they make on a daily basis, and which may seem run of the mill, but do have major consequences for the quality, continuity and accessibility of healthcare. You will identify and make visible the (fundamental) political dimensions that are inherent in these daily practices on the work floor. For instance, how do healthcare providers weigh the needs of patients and engage in priority setting when it comes to dividing their time attentions and resources? What kinds of new dependencies arise between patients, healthcare providers and informal care providers in such contexts? How does precariousness manifest in these (new) relationships of dependency, what kinds of differences are likely to arise between various groups of patients, and what are the consequences of these differences? What, moreover, qualifies as good professional conduct in times of scarcity, and what kinds of new remuneration and accountability regimes are required to support and/or safeguard such professional conduct?

If you join our PhD programme, these are the questions you will seek to answer, but you will also be stimulated to further develop and articulate the research question yourself. You will do so by conducting in-depth ethnographic research in several healthcare organisations in a medium-sized town in the Netherlands. For a considerable amount of time, you will follow healthcare providers on the work floor and examine the kinds of work they do and interactions they have with patients and other formal and informal healthcare providers. In so doing, you will consider the material and online environment in and with which healthcare is organised and provided, as well as the institutional and organisational context in which healthcare providers operate (e.g., standards, quality assurance frameworks, accountability structures and applicable law). One major objective of the project is to develop new theoretical insights that identify and scrutinize the consequences of staffing shortages for the daily care provided in medical practice.

This doctoral research project is part of an overarching research programme entitled ‘Precariousness in a Transforming Welfare State’, which will be carried out by two PhD students (view job: PhD Structural vulnerabilities in access to healthcare and support services). In this research project, you will collaborate with a fellow researcher who will analyse the same issues from the point of view of people who need long-term care and support services.

• You hold a Master’s degree in anthropology, sociology, health sciences, science and technology research, social geography or some other such Master’s programme
• You have a good understanding of qualitative and ethnographic research methods and have an affinity with the healthcare industry
• You are highly analytical and have some knowledge of theories of inclusion and exclusion processes and professional work as discussed in the social sciences
• You have excellent communication and writing skills in Dutch and are able to communicate and write to an academic standard in English
• You are able to have conversations with people sharing different professional and cultural backgrounds and have an understanding of political processes
• In addition, you are a team player who really wants to contribute to a joint exploration of a research agenda

As a PhD student affiliated with ESHPM’s HCG department, your primary duty will be to conduct research. In the process, you will be given plenty of opportunity to work on your personal development, e.g. by attending relevant courses and attending conferences. In addition, you will be given some teaching duties, worth 10% of your hours in a given academic year.

We offer you an internationally oriented and varied job in an enthusiastic team, with excellent working conditions in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities (CAO-NU).

The start date of this position is1 March 2024 and you will be based at Campus Woudestein in Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management (ESHPM). This position is for- 1 FTE. The salary is dependent on your experience and knowledge and ranges from a minimum of € 2.770 to a maximum of € 3.539 gross per month Scale PhD on a fulltime basis (38 hours), in accordance with the CAO-NU. The contract is entered into for the duration of (contractduur) and can be converted into a permanent contract if performance is good and the organizational circumstances remain unchanged.

Everything else we offer you, you can find below!

• Everything you need for a good work-life balance: the option to work from home in consultation with your manager, 41 days of paid leave with a 40 hour contract, 8% holiday pay and an 8.3% end-of-year bonus, and a significant discount on a subscription for our on-campus sports centre!
• Sustainable, inclusive and diverse work environment with an open culture, where you can be yourself and we pay attention to each other and to the world around us. Make the most of our bicycle budget, or join networks such as Young@EUR, FAME, QuEUR, or Young Erasmus Academy.
• Time and space for your development in the broadest sense: development days and a personal career budget, foreign exchange opportunities with most costs paid by EUR, and free access to our university library.
• Good pension with ABP that EUR contributes 2/3rds towards, discounts on various collective insurances with Zilveren Kruis Achmea, Loyalis, and Allianz, and compensation for travel, working from home and home internet use.
• Are you currently combining your job with parenthood, or do you want to do so in the future? EUR offers partially paid parental leave and fully paid additional birth leave for partners, and our campus features a daycare.
• Moving to the Netherlands for your job with EUR? Then you may be eligible for the 30%-ruling if you meet the requirements of the Belastingdienst (Dutch tax agency), and with our Dual Career Programme we will also help your partner find the right job for them.

Erasmus University Rotterdam

Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) is an internationally oriented university with a strong social orientation in its education and research, as expressed in our mission ‘Creating positive societal impact’. EUR is home to 3.700 academics and professionals and almost 33.000 students from more than 140 countries. Everything we do, we do under the credo The Erasmian Way – Making Minds Matter. We’re global citizens, connecting, entrepreneurial, open-minded, and socially involved. These Erasmian Values function as our internal compass and create EUR’s distinctive and recognizable profile. From these values, with a broad perspective and with an eye for diversity, different backgrounds and opinions, our employees work closely together to solve societal challenges from the dynamic and cosmopolitan city of Rotterdam. Thanks to the high quality and positive societal impact of our research and education, EUR can compete with the top European universities. www.eur.nl.

Faculty / Institute / Central service
Thanks to its degree programmes and research activities, which focus on policy- and management-related topics in healthcare, ESHPM is a leading institute in the Netherlands. ESHPM combines various academic disciplines, such as economics, law, socio-medical sciences, organisation science and public administration. This multidisciplinary approach to teaching and research is unique, as are our close ties to policymakers and people working in the healthcare industry.

ESHPM is situated in the Bayle Building on Erasmus University Rotterdam’s Woudestein Campus, and has close ties with Erasmus Medical Centre. Some 1,600 students attend ESHPM, and the faculty has some 200 employees. ESHPM is very much in favour of internationalisation.

The Healthcare Governance (HCG) department employs approximately 50 persons who hail from various social science disciplines, such as public administration, anthropology, sociology and science and technology research. The department conducts research and teaches courses on management processes in the healthcare industry. Many of these research projects and courses are conducted and taught in association with partners in the industry.

A complete overview of the topics we focus on can be found on our website.