MSc Health and Social Care Studies

Start date: September or January

Course length: part time: between two and five years.

Campus: Derby Campus, Kedleston Road and Britannia Mill or by distance learning for selected modules

Faculty: Education, Health and Science

School: School of Health and Social Care

This course will provide you with a flexible framework that will enable you to meet both your personal and professional developmental aspirations.

It will cover a broad range of specialist and general modules that have been developed to reflect the increasingly diverse and changing roles within the healthcare sector and the need to extend the skill set of the people who work within it.

You will negotiate a pathway of study with a designated Director of Studies to ensure that your learning reflects the knowledge and skills you’ll need to develop in specialist fields. This means you’ll learn in a variety of different ways to maintain your professional integrity.

This course will be a perfect opportunity for you if you are undertaking continuing professional development beyond professional registration, but wish to attain a Postgraduate Certificate, Postgraduate Diploma or MSc as recognition of your continued learning and development.

There are a large number of modules to choose from, so you can tailor the course to suit your learning needs and your professional career aspirations. You can study specific awards or take stand alone modules as part of your professional development. Many of the modules are available through distance learning, so you can study at a time and place to suit you.

To achieve the Postgraduate Certificate you’ll need to study the equivalent of three 20 credit modules, for the Postgraduate Diploma you’ll study the equivalent of six 20 credit modules and for the MSc in Advanced Practice you’ll study the equivalent of nine 20 credit modules in total.

The interim awards you can gain if you don’t want to study the full MSc are:

• Postgraduate Certificate in Health and Social Care Studies
• Postgraduate Diploma in Health and Social Care Studies

There is a lot of flexibility regarding the modules you can choose–you can study modules from our other courses such as MSc Advanced Practice or PG Cert Interprofessional Practice Education. As your role changes you may wish to create a bespoke pathway of study which truly reflects your personal and professional aspirations.  However for some of the specialist modules, you may need to be working in a specific area or to have taken other modules beforehand.

As we need a minimum number of students before we can offer some modules, not all of them will run every year, so please check before you apply.

You’ll usually need an undergraduate degree or equivalent qualification, such as a professional healthcare qualification, with appropriate post registration experience. For some pathways, you’ll also need to have relevant practice experience. Please contact us for more information.

The modules that are offered in this programme are very diverse therefore the fees reflect this diversity. You’ll usually study the equivalent of nine 20 credit modules in total.

Course fees for 2014/15 will be available in late 2013 – check our website for details.