Leadership and Management in Health Care – (M.Sc.)

Contents

Course structure
Part-time

Most students combine part-time study with full- or part-time work, and are likely to have leadership or management responsibilities. Roughly 15 face-to-face teaching days are timetabled each year, the rest of the work being personal study at a distance. Students also undertake placements and experiential learning in either their own or another organisational setting. These placements offer the opportunity to study management and leadership in practice, widen the perspectives of the course material studied and also provide a basis for the research-based dissertation.

Tutorial support is offered throughout the course and regular action learning sets are a feature welcomed by our students.

Full-time

Some students, particularly those from overseas, study the course full-time and usually complete in one year. The special needs of full-time students are well catered for with tutorial support and mentorship from the faculty members.

Areas of study
As well as health service management in its classical sense, the course covers the topic of leadership from both traditional and postmodern perspectives. We offer a variety of modules tackling ethical leadership, together with ecological approaches to the health service, particularly related to learning and quality improvement. Whilst focusing on the NHS in the UK, the course covers private systems of care including international models and examples.

The course begins with the core 40-credit module (taught over two blocks of five days) entitled Leading and Transforming Services, followed by the more applied 20-credit module Leadership for Health and Social Care Professionals. The multidisciplinary nature of health care is mirrored in the academic structure of our course, and we encourage inter-disciplinary learning.

Optional modules are then followed for the diploma-level qualification and the masters award is achieved by undertaking the Research Methods module and completing a 12,000 word dissertation. The disseration is usually based on an organisational attachment and study, although desk-based systematic reviews are also possible.

Syllabus
Postgraduate certificate (60 credits)
Leading and Transforming Health Services
Either Management and Leadership for Doctors, or Leadership for Health and Social Care Professionals

Postgraduate diploma (120 credits)
As for PGCert, plus 20-credit modules up to a value of 60 credits chosen from:
Introduction to Patient Safety
Managing Finance for the Public Sector
Knowledge Management
Exploring and Managing Partnerships
Ethical Leadership and Ecological Management
Commissioning and the Market (40 credits)

Masters Degree (180 credits)
As for postgraduate diploma plus:
Research Methods and Critical Appraisal
Dissertation
Experiential Learning in Leadership and Management in Health Care (non-credit-rated mandatory module for masters award)