Course summary

Designed for healthcare professionals and students with an interest in Bioethics, this MSc Programme will provide you with the opportunity to explore and understand ethical problems of medicine in a global context. With an increasingly mobile population across the world, healthcare professionals, more than ever, need to manage a broader range of health care problems including pandemics, which we’ve all seen with the emergence and spread of COVID-19. This programme has been designed to address these challenges and will provide you with a greater understanding of the complexities of socio-cultural factors across different countries, enabling you to develop your skills in complex decision making and ethical reasoning. Options exist to complete modules in Public Health and Policy and to complete a work-based placement. Why Global Healthcare Ethics? As the importance of understanding and undertaking biomedical research on a global scale increases, healthcare professionals, simultaneously, need to develop modern and flexible research skills and professional behaviours in the field of clinical ethics. Major advances in medical and communication technology have increased patients’ expectations and options too, meaning future clinicians need to be equipped with a wide range of intellectual and practical skills to deal with limited healthcare resources nationally and internationally. The Global Healthcare Ethics programme will help you to do just that. The course encompasses a broad range of subjects, from general ethics theories to legal and societal aspects of medical practice and cultural components and representations of body, health, illness and the role of medicine. It also provides an opportunity to gain a deeper and more systematic awareness and understanding of these issues, and to explore the moral problems encountered by health care professionals around the globe. Audience: This MSc Programme is primarily designed for healthcare and allied healthcare professionals, but other students with interests in bioethics are encouraged to apply. Flexible structure: This is a campus programme but has a flexible structure for those health professionals who are in practice and there will be a blended approach to delivery of material on-line and face-to-face. With reference to the current situation, face-to face sessions will only run if it is safe to do so. Your fellow students will be ethicists and health professionals, from the UK and abroad, who you can engage with and share experiences and ethical dilemmas. Teaching: Teaching will be provided by mixed teams of clinicians, ethicists, representatives of medical Institutions (e.g. GMC) and university lecturers providing an experiential, peer group and active learning environment. Assessments: The majority of assessment tasks are centred on clinical scenarios focusing on ethical assessment and decision-making. These link the assignments to the ethical theories that underpin everyday clinical practice and decision making. Other assessment tasks are related to the review of practice in your own workplace, based within the context of national guidelines and protocols, to challenge your current ethical understanding and knowledge of professional practice. Flexible learning Students who register for an award have potential exit points at Postgraduate Certificate (PGCert), Postgraduate Diploma (PGDip) and Masters degree (MSc). The PGC or PGD may be taken as either free standing awards or as an intermediate exit award for any student who has successfully completed the modules required for these awards or who have failed to progress to the next level of study. The MSc programme must be completed within 6 years from the date of first registration, and for a PGD and PGC the maximum period of registration is 4 and 3 years respectively.