MSc Occupational Medicine

The Critical Literature Review enables students to conduct a detailed critical reflection and evidence based review relating to a public health question or topic.  This option is particularly attractive to students wanting to benefit from completing more course units, followed by a smaller written piece of work, rather than a larger dissertation. Students will use their own topic of interest relating to a public health problem to develop their critical review, which will still be embedded within a research framework. They will have an allocated supervisor to guide and develop their academic work for the critical review. This provides opportunities for students to benefit from more experienced academics. 

Students are able to use their own public health interests and questions, as a focus for their critical review. These ideas often arise as students work through any combination of taught units. Students have up to a full academic year to develop and submit their completed critical review. Full-time students will start working on this alongside their 10 taught units, and part-time students are recommended to start their critical review after completing at least 8 of the required 10 course units. This will reduce the workload on parttime students, enabling them to dedicate adequate time to the taught component of the programme, and then their critical review. There are five dates across the academic year for students to register the title of their critical review, following which they will be linked with an academic supervisor. 

To produce an extended critical literature review that focuses on a public health question or problem

The critical literature review will adopt a suitable, transparent  approach to identify relevant literature and critique the quality and relevance of this to help inform the original knowledge gap. This usually pays particular attention to the context/setting within which the original research question was based.  Examples of how this might be actioned include focusing on a particular intervention; on the epidemiology; or on a geographical/locality context of a public health issue/problem.

Students will be expected to become self-directed learners, and take responsibility for their studies in relation to the critical review. The supervisor will guide and support their learning development, and be able to signpost students to resources and literature as particular questions/topics arise.

This is a single piece of written work.

Over the period of study, students will receive feedback and suggestions as part of their supervision. Formal feedback will be given once the final mark has been approved through the University processes. It will include marks allocated to different learning objectives as on the marking template in the critical review handbook/resources and general feedback about the style and presentation. 

Students are guided to the My Learning Essentials offered through the University Library. These online resources include topics such as literature searching, writing skills, and others of relevance to the generic skills across a dissertation.

If you have any questions about the content of this unit, please contact one of the course unit leaders, Roger Harrison (roger.harrison@manchester.ac.uk) or Andrew Jones (andrew.jones@manchester.ac.uk). If you have any other queries, please contact the PGT programme administrators via email on shs.programmes@manchester.ac.uk