NHS R&D Northwest are working with professional coaches Dr. Will Medd and Jeff Gill, authors of ‘Your PhD Coach’, to pilot and evaluate a Peer-2-Peer coaching programme for healthcare professionals working in the North West, who are undertaking their PhDs on a part-time basis. The programme, which has been run on a national level for PhD students from a range of disciplines, is designed to challenge you to get the most out of your PhD experience, whether you are ‘in the process’ or have recently completed.

The goal of the Peer-2-Peer Coaching Skills Programme is to help you develop a range of skills and techniques that you can utilize for self-coaching and peer support to enhance the PhD experience. This will include:

• Focusing on making progress with your own goals, performance and development in relation to your PhD and post-doc experience.
• Gaining an introduction to basic coaching skills and techniques, including powerful questioning, creating awareness of choice, working with intuition.
• Building relationships through peer support within the NW PhD community.

By learning powerful coaching skills and techniques participants will build their confidence, creativity, motivation, relationships and ability to achieve their goals. Key to the process will be becoming aware of the choices you are making in how you think, feel and do things, in ways that will challenge you and your peers to move forward with your PhD and your research careers in the context of your work and life.

The programme will run over 12 weeks, starting in February 2013, and comprise an initial two day workshop followed by a series of peer to peer coaching sessions conducted on a 1:1 basis and a final one day workshop at the end of the 12 weeks. Numbers will be limited to 24 participants. The closing dates for receiving applications will be the 2nd December 2013.

For further information, please click here.