MSc/PgDip/PgCert Health and Social Care Leadership

Course structure

Part-time – typically three years

You attend 12 days a year on average. Typically, you complete the Postgraduate Certificate in the first year, the Postgraduate Diploma in the second year and MSc dissertation in the final year.

Starts September

Typical modules may include

Course structure

The masters award is achieved by successfully completing 180 credits.

Core modules

The agile leader (15 credits)
You develop an overview of the fields of management and leadership and their relevance to your work, and begin to understand how you currently approach managing and leading others and the impact on your service. You also develop your academic and analytical skills and build your confidence.

The leadership landscape (15 credits)
Explore your organisational landscape and develop an understanding of how to lead effectively within the context in which you work. You develop a detailed understanding of a range of management and leadership theories and reflect on the implications for your own role as well as those of others. You analyse your complex organisation environment, including the diverse perspectives of a range of stakeholders, and from this consider the on-going development of yourself, your organisation and the services you deliver.

Optional modules

Leading sustainable change (30 credits)
Change is said to be almost constant in organisations today. Research suggests that a high number of change initiatives fail. This means a lot of good ideas, that could improve service delivery and patient/service user outcomes, never come to fruition. A common cause of this failure is a lack of understanding of the process of organisational change and organisation culture. Through better understanding the change process you will be better able to realise service improvements in the future.

Leading people (30 credits)
The ability to develop other people is a core leadership skill as people are the key resource within all health and social care organisations. This module develops your theoretical and applied understanding of human and interpersonal dimensions of leadership and management in complex organisational contexts.

Strategy and systems (30 credits)
This module enables you to develop an understanding of the fundamental challenges, principles and practices of strategic management, and utilises systems thinking methods and practices to develop a critical understanding of strategic development in health and social care systems.

Service development and evaluation (operations management) (15 credits)
This module enables you to acquire core operations management skills that help you develop, implement and evaluate improvements to your service. This benefits your organisation, your service users and you as a manager/leader.

Team effectiveness (15 credits)
Team working is a critical component of effective working within organisations. This module aims to critically explore strategies for developing and continually improving in effective teams. Through undertaking this module you develop a better understanding of the teams and groups that you are part of and how to get the best from yourself and the people you work with.

Real world enquiry for leaders (15 credits)
Understanding how to evaluate issues in a rigorous way in order to make the right decisions is a key skill for an effective leader. This module equips you with a deep understanding of research methodology, methods and various approaches available for organisational enquiry and their ethical implications in order that you can analyse issues and problems and devise informed interventions and strategies for service development, which benefit you, your organisation and the service user/patient.

Masters

Dissertation for leadership in health and social care professions (60 credits)
During this module you complete a project focusing on a significant organisational issue. The project should have the capacity to influence the development of your organisation. Your tutors provide academic support and guidance with • choosing your research topic • methodology • data analysis • preparation for publication. You may also join a research group with other students to support each other and feedback on your progress.