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PhD - physicians’ work stress and diagnostic errors in emergency medicine

Updated: 04 Jul 2024

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Research / Academic
Rotterdam

Are you passionate about investigating workforce challenges from the perspective of psychology, health sciences and medicine? Are you interested in applying these disciplines in clarifying risks of physicians’ stress to their work performance in providing patient care? If so, we invite you to join our team as a PhD student to unravel the impact of job demands, job resources and physicians’ work stress on diagnostic errors in emergency medicine.

Job description
Emergency medicine physicians see patients who urgently need care. One of their key tasks is to determine the severity of the situation and identify possible diagnoses. This diagnostic process is challenged by diseases with variable presentations, while emergency physicians deal with interruptions and time pressure in a stressful work environment. This environment is characterized by abundant job demands (e.g. workloads) – and a lack of job resources (e.g. perceived support). Prolonged exposure to such demands and (lack of) resources increases work stress. This is especially problematic as excessive work stress hinders physicians in performing well in providing care, yet it is unknown how the diagnostic process specifically is affected. Therefore, there is a knowledge gap on whether and how stressed physicians exposed to excessive job demands and limited resources are more likely to commit more diagnostic errors.

This knowledge gap is addressed in the current PhD trajectory, by clarifying how job demands and resources, and work stress affect physicians’ diagnostic performance in emergency medicine. Your primary task as a PhD student involves conducting scientific research together with your supervisory team. This involves coordinating the data collection of studies and performing data analyses. Furthermore, you will be tasked with the writing of scientific articles, which will culminate into your PhD thesis. In addition to research tasks, you will have the opportunity to enrol in relevant courses that align with both the project requirements and your personal academic interests and you will be able to teach in our Bachelor Health Sciences and/or Master Health Care Management.

The research is a collaboration of the Erasmus School of Health Policy and Management (ESHPM) and the Erasmus MC.

Requirements:

  • A research master or master degree in psychology, health sciences, human resource studies, (interdisciplinary) social sciences or a related discipline.
  • Interest in (occupational health) psychology, health care quality and the work environment of physicians.
  • Strong analytical and research skills.
  • Experience with quantitative research and statistical analyses, including computer skills (e.g. SPSS, Stata, SAS or R)
  • Interest in qualitative research
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English and preferably also Dutch.
  • You should be able to work both independently and as a member of a large multidisciplinary team (psychologists, sociologists, health scientists, physicians).

Salary Benefits:

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 is 1 October 2024 (or in mutual agreement) and you will be basedat at campus Woudestein at Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management (ESHPM). This position is for 1 fte. The salary 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 1.5 year, which will be extended with a second term of 2.5 years if the candidate performs well.

Everything else we offer you, you can find below!

Work Hours:

40 hours per week

Address:

Burgemeester Oudlaan 50