Patient and Public Involvement is interwoven through all the College’s health and social care provision in collaboration with our Expert by Experience group (ExE) group. The group work alongside academics in a range of roles as advisors, presenters and consultants in our admissions process, teaching and learning, programme and curriculum development and assessment. This leads to a positive impact on the quality of provision and the student experience and a range of practical and ethical benefits for the service users and carers themselves.
We meet regularly with professional leaders in health and social care, and our academic staff spend time supporting students in health and social care settings. Many of our staff also work in practice settings alongside their academic roles. These close links help us to be sure that our courses are created and refined to meet current and future needs of both the public and the health and social care sector.
Our college research centre works alongside NHS, Social Care partners and the public to help evaluate and ensure the improvement and quality standards of local services.
Throughout their courses many of our students undertake quality improvement projects, exploring a specific area of health or social care. The public are key in many of these projects, through engaging with the students and helping to establish improvement goals and in the evaluation of their work. Some examples of these projects can be seen in the case studies.
Inspiring our community
We're proud to be part of a fantastic city and we are always looking for innovative ways to invest back into the community.
We regularly offer grants to inspiring projects that seek to benefit the community in some way. Whether it’s a conservation project, wellbeing programme, youth work or anything that benefits the community, organisations can apply for a share of our annual £10000 fund.
The University works with regional schools and colleges to inspire 14-17 years olds to progress to Higher Education through activities such as the ‘Health Care Insight Day’ and ‘Boys in to HE’.
With free to attend events such as the annual Family Fun Day and the Nature Connections two-day festival, we welcome our local community regularly to the University. Our public lecture series which brings leading figures from all walks of life to the university is popular with local organisations, companies and individuals alike. You can find out more about our events on our website.
Global Engagement
We also have a strong international body of students from across the globe with 800 international students from over 100 countries. This is alongside our many partner institutions all over the world who teach our courses to over 8000 students.
Our online learning provision ‘University of Derby Online Learning’ (UDOL) also brings a number of our courses to over 3000 students in more than 100 countries. More information about the courses offered, including in Health and Social Care and free modules via online learning can be found on our website or our twitter account.
We regularly host international conferences, such as the Consortium of Institutes of Higher Education in Health and Rehabilitation in Europe (COHERE) conference, bringing leading figures and international experts to Derby.