MSc Advanced Leadership for Professional Practice (Allied Health Profession) / Course details

This unit will emphasise the theory, concepts, and evidence-based good practice that under-pin managing a high-quality research project in a health or social care setting in accordance with good practice guidance, ethical and governance standards. In particular, we will focus on how to apply this knowledge to: designing effective recruitment, consenting, data/document management and service user/PPI plans. Thereby, the unit should support you in effectively planning and managing a research study in contemporary and challenging health and social care contexts.

To critically appraise and synthesise relevant research-related evidence, and through evidence based decision-making apply such evidence to the planning and management of good quality research in health and social care.

The unit will be taught in one semester through distance learning. A range of interactive online materials are available online through Blackboard. These include: video clips, weekly reading, activities, and discussion boards with students and staff and links to web-based resources. Though the unit is primarily delivered on-line, students will be offered the option of two face-face seminar sessions (at the start and mid-way through the unit).

• Critically review different research paradigms and discuss how these apply to health and social care research.
• Value and critical appraise relevant research policy, statements, frameworks and legislation that underpin health and social care research.
• Value and critically examine the concepts underlying useful research and avoidance of research waste

• Synthesise and apply the requirements and good research practice statements to a range of health and social care contexts.
• Critically appraise the principles underlying ethical research and how these apply to ethical reviews of research.
• Value research participants’ perspectives, and critically analyse and synthesise evidence underpinning good practice in service user/carer/PPI in health and social care research.

• Design effective recruitment strategies
• Propose robust plans for gaining informed consent and assent
• Design effective data and document management strategies.
• Develop plans for promoting and managing service user/carer/PPI in health and social care research.

• Critically reflect on your own academic performance and utilise a range of strategies to improve these and overcome any particular difficulties.
• Demonstrate skills in working collegiately and communicating effectively with others as a member of a team.
• Effectively utilise information technology / health informatics.
• Utilise skills in systematic, critical analysis, synthesis and creative approaches to assist in problem-solving and decision-making in relation to complex issues.

Students will normally have the opportunity to receive feedback on formative work submitted prior to the summative assessment. Other feedback opportunities will also be available in class and online discussion boards. Online feedback is provided in Grademark. Provisional feedback based on internal marking will be made available prior to the Exam Board on the basis that these marks are yet to be ratified at the Exam Board and therefore may be subject to change. A standard feedback mechanism in Grademark is utilised across all postgraduate programmes within the School which provides detailed and constructive feedback on each component and aspect of assessment and identifies areas of strength and those aspects which could be enhanced.

Student feedback is obtained through open discussion forums on blackboard, in class discussions, via formal University unit evaluation forms and also qualitative, in house evaluations at the end of the unit. 

Byrne, D. (2016), Research ethics, Los Angeles, Sage.
NHS HRA (2020) Public involvement. Health Research Authority. https://www.hra.nhs.uk/planning-and-improving-research/best-practice/public-involvement/
Treweek, S., Pitkethly, M., Cook, J., Fraser, C., Mitchell, E., Sullivan, F., Jackson, C., Taskila, T. K., & Gardner, H. (2018). Strategies to improve recruitment to randomised trials. Cochrane Library (CD-ROM), 2018(2). https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.mr000013.pub6