Building Capacity in Health Services Research: Developing and managing a 3 institution collaboration

This collaborative PhD programme had to address several challenges – to develop a programme using very scarce skills across 3 institutions, to ensure that the programme was scientifically rigorous while accommodating a diverse range of topics and methods, and to develop skills that are useful in policy focused research. In line with other modern PhD programmes the requirement was for a partly taught programme, with strong emphases on careful monitoring of quality of supervision, and student progress. It was also necessary to develop rules and procedures that were compatible with 3 sets of university regulations and practices. Given the diverse backgrounds of the students, it was also necessary to have fair and timely processes to manage cases where people were not suited to the programme.