The University is set to invest over £7million in the School of Medicine as part of a major strategic change initiative.
Under the aegis of Project LIVE, the School is investing £2million in strengthening its staff base across a range of academic, clinical and professional services roles. This major recruitment drive will significantly increase expert clinical input in the teaching timetable and ongoing curriculum developments.
As part of the investment, recruitment to the new clinical and academic leadership posts is well underway, with around half of the new staff expected to join the School by the start of the 2018/19 academic year. These subject-experts will support academic delivery in new areas of teaching, such as design and technology in healthcare and personalised medicine and in revitalising teaching in a wide range of clinical disciplines, including haematology, stroke medicine, vascular surgery, psychiatry (old age, learning disability, child and adolescent), anaesthetics, plastics and burns surgery, maxillofacial surgery, radiology and neurosurgery.
Professor Hazel Scott, Dean of the School of Medicine, explains: “The School of Medicine has helped position Liverpool at the forefront of medical practice and research for over 180 years. Now we need to innovate and change how we work to better reflect the needs of today’s students and those of our healthcare partners. This investment will enable us to incorporate emerging models of care and innovations in medicine within the curriculum and better prepare the doctors of the future.”
A further £5million is being invested in improving facilities at Cedar House. Work is already underway on refurbishing the six-storey building to improve its learning and social environment and create a more identifiable ‘home’ for the School’s 1,500 medical students. Investigations are also ongoing on how to incorporate simulation training facilities, so that students can benefit from enhanced experiential learning techniques.
Subject to planning permission, a single storey courtyard extension will be developed on the ground floor to accommodate a new student hub where students can study, collaborate and socialise. The remaining courtyard space will be re-landscaped making it fully accessible from the new extension, with enhanced connections between the inside and outside spaces of the building. Work on the extension is scheduled to start in December 2018 in order to be ready for the start of academic year 2019/20.
Professor Scott adds: “The redevelopment of Cedar House is about more than bricks and mortar. It is about creating a supportive, vibrant community of practitioners that includes students, staff, and alumni as well as our NHS colleagues, in an environment that feels and delivers a superb space for medical training.”
Additionally, Project LIVE is developing six distinct IT systems projects, linked to student attendance, enhanced handling of student support cases, timetabling support for students in clinical years, paperless admission processes and improved quality assurance tracking and reporting.
New marketing materials and a refreshed visual identify have also been developed for the School of Medicine, emphasising its impressive heritage and contribution to medical practice and research.
The investment builds on the work already underway by the University and its partners to improve the city region’s health economy. Liverpool suffers from major health inequalities and is an area of major morbidity and mortality compared with many other parts of the country, with children among those most affected.
Researchers at the University have been instrumental in advocating Liverpool sign up to the UNICEF Child Friendly Cities programme and the institution is now working with city partners such as Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Liverpool City Council and Liverpool Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) to take this agenda forward and improve the life chances of children in the city region.
You can find out more about the University’s new investment in the School of Medicine and planned building works through a display on the ground floor foyer of Cedar House, which will be updated as the works progress.