Healthcare Research Skills and Methods PgCert

This course is suitable for a wide range of healthcare professional, and is of particular relevance to doctors and allied healthcare professionals in academic training, or established clinicians who wish to develop, enhance and implement their research skills. It will also be of benefit to healthcare educators, social care practitioners and researchers.

This course covers:

• knowledge and techniques
• personal effectiveness
• engagement, influence and impact
• research governance and organisation.

You will gain an excellent foundation for critically understanding and evaluating research, its design, conduct, dissemination and funding, as well as acquiring knowledge of appropriate statistical methods. And you will develop knowledge, practical skills and attitudes you need to become an effective healthcare researcher and conduct your own research.

Teaching and learning methods

You will learn on this course via ‘blended learning’ which includes a wide variety of methods. Face-to-face lectures and supervisions are interspersed with flipped classrooms, webinars, and online teaching (in a MOOC format).

Formal, teacher-led sessions will introduce new topics. These give you an overview of subject matter, and review difficult concepts and summaries. You are encouraged to ask questions, and will be set small problems that can be discussed interactively. Lectures are filmed, and recordings will be made available. The lectures are supplemented by tutorial sessions to make sure you have plenty of opportunity to ask questions and have discussions.

Online learning material for all modules will include lecture slides, recordings of lectures, reading lists and resources, links to videos and course information.

The core teaching for the Critical Appraisal module will be delivered via a three-week ‘massive online open course’ (MOOC), created by lecturers and hosted on the FutureLearn platform. This includes articles, videos, narrated PowerPoints, discussions and quizzes. Given the practical nature of this very important research skill, the MOOC core teaching will be followed by interactive small group seminars and journal clubs where you are encouraged and supported to develop and refine your appraisal skills, and your confidence in reaching balanced decisions about quality of evidence.

Assessment methods

Your work will be assessed with both ‘formative assessments’, which monitor your progress, and ‘summative assessments’, which assess whether you have fulfilled the learning outcomes for this programme. Assessment methods vary between modules, and will include presentations and written work.