Master Thesis - Benchmarking Professional Education Offerings in Healthcare

Essity – a leading global hygiene and health company and the home of brands like Libero, TENA, Libresse, Tork, Sorbact and JOBST is offering an exciting and challenging master thesis opportunity for you who want to contribute with your expertise, energy and creativity.

About the job

Developing and applying a systematic, efficient and responsible professional education benchmarking framework for TENA Education

Are you interested in how systematic analysis of external professional education offerings can generate strategic insights and support the development of healthcare education?

At Essity, we believe that innovation can emerge from new perspectives and strong collaboration between academia and business. In this Master Thesis project, you will apply your theoretical knowledge and analytical skills to a real strategic challenge within healthcare education and continence management.

You will develop and test a systematic, efficient and responsible approach for benchmarking professional education. You will also analyse and interpret the findings from a pilot benchmark to identify relevant patterns, emerging trends, gaps and opportunities. Your analysis and recommendations will help establish a foundation for how TENA can continue to benchmark external professional education offerings and guide the ongoing development of TENA Education.

Your role

As a Master Thesis student, you will work closely with colleagues involved in TENA Education, customer value propositions, healthcare marketing and continence care. You will receive a thorough introduction to our current educational offering, our different learner audiences and the knowledge already generated through previous internal work.

You will also be supported in connecting with relevant internal stakeholders, potentially including colleagues from:

Global and local marketing

Medical and clinical functions

Market Intelligence

Legal and Compliance

Tender and Procurement Excellence

Digital learning and education

Selected local markets

You will bring an independent academic perspective to the project. In return, you will gain experience of strategic research in a global healthcare company and insight into how customer education, evidence, digital learning and market intelligence contribute to healthcare value propositions. An important part of your role will be to apply the proposed framework in a limited pilot and independently analyse and interpret the results. You will be expected to identify relevant patterns, emerging trends, gaps and opportunities, assess their implications for TENA Education, and develop actionable recommendations for continued benchmarking and future educational development.

The collaboration is expected to include:

Regular supervision and project discussions

Access to relevant internal background material

Introductions to selected subject-matter experts

Interviews or workshops with internal stakeholders

Potential customer or market research, depending on the final scope and feasibility

Independent analysis and interpretation of pilot findings, strategic synthesis and development of actionable recommendations

Background

Healthcare customers increasingly need solutions that extend beyond individual products. In continence management, healthcare professionals and care organisations also need knowledge, guidance, practical tools and implementation support to help deliver consistent, effective and person-centred care.

TENA Education supports a number of customer groups, including professional caregivers, nurses, prescribers, pharmacists and care managers. Education may help address knowledge gaps, strengthen professional confidence, support appropriate product selection and use, and improve consistency in continence care. However, its customer and strategic value needs to be better understood and demonstrated.

External professional education offerings are challenging to compare systematically. Offers may differ between countries, languages, target audiences, formats and platforms. Some platforms require registration, customer status, professional credentials or payment, while clinical credibility, learning outcomes and evidence of effectiveness may not be publicly available.

Initial internal work has developed an assessment approach covering three principal areas:

Access and platform

Content quality

Learning experience

The framework assesses accessibility, user experience across mobile and desktop devices, clinical and scientific credibility, relevance to target audiences, interactivity, engagement and practical value. It also includes a market-level analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats associated with external professional education offerings.

Further research is needed to determine which dimensions are most relevant to benchmark, which information sources and assessment methods provide a reliable basis for comparison, and how findings should be analysed, interpreted and translated into strategic implications. TENA also needs a repeatable and responsible approach for continuing to benchmark external professional education offerings, recognising emerging trends and using the resulting insights to guide the ongoing development of TENA Education.

Project

The purpose of this Master Thesis is to develop and validate a systematic, efficient and responsible approach for benchmarking professional education offerings in continence care and skin care management. The project will identify the most relevant areas to assess, evaluate practical information sources and access limitations, develop a structured benchmarking methodology, and apply the proposed approach in a limited pilot.

The student or students will be responsible not only for developing and testing the methodology, but also for analysing and interpreting the pilot findings. The analysis should identify material patterns, emerging trends, gaps and opportunities, assess their implications for TENA Education, and provide actionable recommendations for how TENA can continue to benchmark external professional education offerings and use the resulting insights to support ongoing educational development.

The work must be conducted in a legally, ethically and methodologically responsible manner. The report should clearly distinguish verified observations from interpretations and recommendations and transparently document source reliability, access limitations, unavailable information and areas of uncertainty.

Main research question

How can TENA systematically, efficiently and responsibly benchmark professional education offerings and translate the findings into strategic decisions and the ongoing development of TENA Education?

Possible supporting research questions

Depending on the final project scope, the thesis could investigate:

Which characteristics and dimensions of external professional education offerings are most relevant to benchmark for strategic decision-making?

Which information sources, collection methods and assessment criteria provide the most reliable and practical basis for external professional education benchmarking?

How can professional education benchmarking be conducted consistently while respecting applicable legal requirements, ethical standards, access restrictions and company policies?

How should pilot findings be analysed, interpreted, communicated and translated into priorities for future professional education benchmarking and the development of TENA Education?

The thesis should not begin with the assumption that TENA Education is superior. Students will be expected to undertake an independent and critical analysis of external professional education offerings and the available evidence. They should distinguish between verified observations, interpretations, recommendations and areas where the available information is insufficient, while avoiding unsupported conclusions about unavailable external prof