Critical Policy Review

Expand your understanding of public health policy. Choose one aspect of public health and/or social-care policy and explore it in depth. Explore the related professional, ethical, strategic, political and ideological issues. Examine its target group, its outcomes, and its impact on the planning and delivery of local services.

Our course will test your understanding of contemporary public health policy, with particular reference to professional and ethical healthcare practice. It will engage you in a metatheoretical analysis of an existing health and/or social-care policy. You’ll be encouraged to think critically about the strategic, political and ideological frameworks for the policy.

You’ll outline the rationale for your choice of policy; identify the target group; and consider the policy’s relationship with, and links to, historical and related policy. You’ll evaluate intended and actual policy outcomes, and discuss the merits of the evaluation methodology. You’ll look at the policy's theoretical and philosophical premise, and describe its impact on the planning and delivery of local services to patients/clients.

Course content

• Writing, critical analysis & presenting an extended argument at master’s level
• Concepts relating to metatheoretical analysis & philosophy of science
• The process of critical & ideological analysis of policy
• The impact of policy development on the user.

This course is the same as the final module in the Postgraduate Diploma in Specialist Community Public Health Nursing.

This module is structured so that the teaching component occurs within the first trimester and tutorials are incorporated into the second trimester.