MBA Health Leadership

Start date: September

Course length: full time: one year, part time: three years.

Campus: Kedleston Road site, Derby Campus

This course is subject to approval

We've developed this course to reflect the changes in the health and social care sector to ensure that your knowledge is up to date and relevant.

The Health and Social Care Act 2012 requires new clinical leadership and management skills to modernise health and social care provision, particularly as services transform and re-structure to meet future health and social care requirements. During this course you'll cover improvements in quality and productivity to cope with the demographic changes in health and social care, and will develop your knowledge on clinical management and leadership approaches.

The course will encourage you to consider more patient focussed approaches. As patients are increasingly empowered by knowledge of their rights and choices to expect choice and good quality standards of care from health and social care services, patient focussed approaches becomes ever more crucial.

The MBA programme accelerates the leadership development of emergent and established leaders within the Health sector. The programme develops the skills, behaviours and tools required for the effective leadership of organisations and people, drawing on best practice and learning from different types of organisations and sectors.

To address the need for specialist input and application, and contextualisation, there is a specifically Health focused module: Developing Healthcare Commissioning. There is also an opportunity for students to identify an alternative module for the ‘Sustainable Business Operations’ as long as Programme Outcomes are met.  As with our MBA provision for the Education sector, a Pathway Leader will organise group activities and shared working in order to address current issues in Health leadership, and policy changes are embedded into the programme and assignment work.  The final, substantial piece of independent work contained in the Business Impact Study will be specifically focused on leadership within the Health sector.

During the first semester you will study:

• Core module - Contemporary Challenges in Leadership and Management – 20 credits
• Prescribed module - Developing Healthcare Commissioning – 20 credits
• Plus either Sustainable Business Operations or Principles of Service Improvement – 20 credits

During the second semester you will study three core modules:

• Financial Planning and Performance – 20 credits
• Leading, Managing and Developing People – 20 credits
• Strategic Management – 20 credits

During the third semester you will undertake a Business Impact Study or Independent Study – 60 credits

You will need a good honours first degree with relevant health and social care experience.

Formative assessment will be provided across the breadth of modules to provide students with a structured learning approach, as well as feedback opportunities. The process may include self- assessment, peer review, tutor feedback, and come from exercises based on, for example, enquiry based learning and problem based learning activities.

Summative assessment will aid students in developing Masters’ levels in knowledge, skills and personal development.  Over the course of a programme students will experience different assessment methods which may include computer aided tests, research projects, work based reports, case study analysis, patchwork assessment, and reflective reports. In all cases, assessment is directly related to either a student’s personal development or in applying solutions to their own organisations or case study organisations.

In all programmes the final assessment at Master’s level will normally be a major piece of independent research and application.

This course will provide you with the clinical leadership and management skills required to enable you to respond to the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and modernise health and social care provision.

You can expect to be working at senior clinical management level and to be empowered to effectively manage the new culture of commissioning, monitoring and evaluating service provision. You will develop as a professional who is capable of responding to change to ensure a sustainable future for health, managing increasingly diverse and multi-disciplinary teams.

By the end of the programme students will have achieved a range of learning outcomes at the level 7 standard of the Framework for Higher Education Qualification (FHEQ).  These are aligned with the QAA Subject Benchmark Statement for specialist Masters’ Degrees in Business and Management (2007) and the CMI Level 7 Qualification Standards for Strategic Leadership and Management.