CAMERa

About us

There has been an increasing recognition that health system effectiveness and improvements in population health are critically dependent on an appropriately skilled, supported and deployed healthcare workforce. Healthcare workers are critical to patient safety and quality of care.

The Collaboration for the Advancement of Medical Education Research (CAMERa) exists to improve the development and sustainability of the healthcare workforce through high-quality research. 

Our research programme is supported by external funding bodies including NIHR, Erasmus Plus, GMC, GDC, HEE, Health Foundation, Medical Council of Ireland, Advance HE, and the Department for International Development.

At the University of Plymouth we train and support professionals across almost every different healthcare group, providing the largest range of healthcare training programmes in the South West of England. CAMERa researchers promote research and scholarship across the range of healthcare professions in the Faculty of Health and support the Division of Educational Scholarship in Peninsula Medical School. Many of our educators occupy strategic positions nationally and internationally in organisations directly impacting healthcare education. Funded, collaborative research by a multi-professional group impacts directly on the international literature, educational theory, practice and policy at Plymouth, as well as nationally and internationally.

The CAMERa research teamsits within the Plymouth Institute of Health and Care Research groupand are all located within the Faculty of Health. The team come from a range of disciplinary backgrounds and use a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods.

Research interests

Our world-leading research investigates workforce sustainability, seeking to address the critical questions and develop tangible solutions that have local, national and international impact. Our work focuses on three main themes:

  • Workforce development
  • Continuum of education in healthcare careers
  • Professional regulation

The areas of research we specialise in are capability, preparedness for practice, recruitment, selection, remediation, revalidation, resilience, fitness to practise, and migration of healthcare professionals.

Methodological expertise

  • Systematic and scoping reviews
  • Quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods designs
  • Realist synthesis and evaluation
  • Survey design and evaluation
  • Ethnography; interpretative research
  • Participatory research
  • Development, implementation and evaluation of interventions
  • Evaluation of programmes/interventions
  • Secondary data analysis
  • Statistical analysis