Core modules

• Advancing Professional Decision Making

  The aim of this module is to advance your decision-making skills through critical reflection particularly in the area of advanced organisational practice. The demands of modern healthcare systems require the development of roles for confident autonomous organisational practitioners, who possess the knowledge and skills to implement complex decisions in a rapidly changing health sector environment and to play key roles in service development. This is particularly important in advanced organisational practice and you will be encouraged to focus on new or advanced areas of service developments and consider issues such as ethics, legislation and quality assurance.

• Enabling Leadership in Health and Social Care

  This ability of organisations to adopt change rather than merely adapt to it is one of the major hall marks of a learning organisation. This module will explore the complexity of the health sector, particularly in large hospitals. The use of hard and soft approaches to leadership will be explored along with the use of technologies and management information systems to support both clinical care and the organisational structure. The support of the management of change through people will be a recurrent theme within the module.

• Finance, Accounting and Marketing Health

  Finance, accounting and marketing are business skills which are becoming increasingly important throughout health care and a fundamental requirement of any senior manager, leader or decision makers within the sector. This module examines these areas from traditional approaches used in the private and public sectors, and then builds on this underpinning to consider contemporary approaches, including those relevant to third sector health care provision. Participants are taught techniques for making revenue and capital decisions.

• Strategy Management in Health and Social Care

  The development and implementation of a coherent corporate strategy is one of the main measures of success for an organisation. Strategy is a critical feature of the organisations wellbeing. It establishes organisational direction, service intentions and resource commitment. It is the organisations blueprint for both survival and expansion. Understanding the nature and activities associated with strategy development and implementation is a key knowledge requirement for those in health service management. This module will provide exposure into the factors influencing the formulation, development and implementation of hospital and associated health sector strategy.

• Research Studies

  This module will provide you with a critical overview of the main methodologies and designs applied to research within health and social care, professional practice, regulation and policy. It provides you with an opportunity to explore the theoretical dilemmas which underlie the process of inquiry and its relationship to practice. The module will provide a framework within which to select, evaluate and justify the research methods chosen by students for their research project.

• Major project

  This module will support you in the preparation and submission of a Masters stage project, which will take the form of a dissertation.