Program Overview

Clinical Professional Development MSc

Overview

The Clinical Professional Development MSc is a part-time, taught master's degree designed for graduate health professionals. The program aims to enhance professional development and prepare students for future-facing roles in healthcare. It is a highly flexible course that allows students to tailor their studies to their individual requirements and complete a major research project.

What You'll Study

The program consists of a range of modules that provide a comprehensive, innovative, diverse, and flexible portfolio of learning within a multi-professional framework. Students will study the following modules:

• Developing Research Capabilities for Advanced Clinical Practice: This module engages students in the critical analysis and synthesis of complex problems across a range of settings, enabling them to develop appropriate knowledge, understanding, and skills to effect innovative solutions that enhance person-centered care and improve health outcomes.
• Research Methods: This module introduces students to the research process, including the philosophical fundamentals of both quantitative and qualitative traditions and a range of research methodologies.
• Advanced Practice Project: This module challenges students to explore how to lead, implement, and evaluate a service improvement project within a health and social care setting.
• Dissertation for Clinical Professional Development: This module provides students with the opportunity to undertake an in-depth and extended piece of investigative enquiry from conceptualization through to completion in their chosen area of interest.
• Dissertation for Health and Social Care Professionals: This module enables students to focus upon a significant piece of investigative enquiry from conceptualization through to completion, with a focus on translation to practice and improving health outcomes.

In addition to these core modules, students can choose from a range of optional modules, including:

• Advanced Respiratory Care Practice (Adult)
• Assessing Learning and Evaluating Teaching
• Context of Advanced Practice
• Developing a Business Case for Change and Innovation
• Developing Clinical Skills and Capabilities in Advanced Practice (Adult)
• Delivering Teaching and Facilitating Learning Opportunities
• Developing Potential in Others
• Health Promotion
• Identification and Management of Frailty and Complex Care
• Inclusivity in Clinical Education
• Inflammatory Bowel Disease: From Aetiology to Diagnosis and Management
• Leading People Through Change
• Medical Leadership
• Non-Medical Prescribing
• Promoting Integration and Collaboration for Mental Health
• Promoting Professionalism and Ethics in Multidisciplinary Practice
• Strategic Clinical Leadership
• Supporting the Postgraduate Learner in the Medical Workplace
• Teaching and Learning in the Clinical Context
• Teaching and Learning in the Medical Workplace
• Transforming End of Life Communication and Spiritual Care
• Transforming End of Life Trajectories
• Transforming Integrated Palliative and End of Life Care

How You'll Study

The program uses a range of teaching and learning strategies, including individual one-to-one sessions, supported online learning, small group work, and tutor-led lectures. While the majority of classes will take place at Edge Hill University, some modules may involve studying at sites elsewhere, in which case students will be responsible for travel and parking costs.

How You'll Be Assessed

Assessment methods vary according to the demands of the module but can be through assignments, objective structured clinical examinations, portfolios, seminar presentations, and work-based learning projects.

Who Will Be Teaching You

The program team comprises expert staff with many years of experience in clinical practice, including working in areas such as emergency care, paramedic practice, respiratory care, mental health, primary care, and medical practice. Students will also be taught by associate tutors from primary and secondary care, neurology, biological sciences, and areas of senior healthcare management.

Entry Criteria

To join this course, students should be a graduate health professional with a degree equivalent to UK first-class or second-class honors (2:2 or above) in a relevant healthcare-related subject. Applicants with a third-class honors degree with additional evidence of academic ability may also be considered. Students will need to provide evidence that they have access to a suitable workplace environment and a suitable reference, normally from their line manager, to confirm their suitability to join and complete the course.

English Language Requirements

While international students who are not resident and working in the UK cannot currently join this course, if students are working and resident in the UK but their first language is not English, they will need IELTS 6.5 overall, with a score no lower than 6.0 in each individual component, or an equivalent English language qualification.

How to Apply

There is an online application process for this course. Students should choose the application form for their preferred intake date and mode of study.

Facilities

The Faculty of Health, Social Care, and Medicine offers outstanding facilities for the education and training of health and social care professionals. The contemporary teaching and learning resources include leading-edge clinical skills facilities, an 860-seat lecture theater, and a variety of teaching rooms and social learning spaces.

Finance

Tuition fees for the program are typically £50 per credit for UK part-time students, with a total of 180 credits required for the MSc. The University may administer a small inflationary rise in tuition fees, in line with Government policy, in subsequent academic years as students progress through the course.

Your Future Career

On successful completion of this course, students will have the skills, knowledge, and expertise needed to play a significant role in the delivery and development of aspects of medical/clinical practice, education, leadership, research, and policy. Patient safety will be at the heart of their practice, underpinned by professional knowledge, values, and behaviors.