About your MSc Healthcare Management
Our masters in healthcare management online is ideal if you are a leader or manager in a health or social care setting, or someone looking to step into this role. You'll build on your existing experience within the various health systems and gain not only the knowledge and skills to reach your full potential as a manager, but the emotional tools to lead with empathy and drive positive organisational change. You'll study online giving you the flexibility to achieve your career aspirations around your other commitments.
Course highlights
- Develop the knowledge, skills and emotional tools to meet today's healthcare challenges.
- Build ongoing relationships that will support your future career
- Gain an advanced understanding of key topics including disaster prevention, change management and ethical decision making
- Improve your professional practice and make a real difference in your workplace
How you'll study
This course is studied 100% online
Study this course over 2 years
Start in January or September
Application deadline
Our next deadline is31st October 2023
Fees: £7,700
Course overview
Management and leadership in the healthcare sector is increasingly important worldwide, with The World Health Organization placing greater emphasis than ever before on the need for managers to have appropriate competencies and the NHS promoting specific values and principles of care, a Healthcare Management MSc is a valuable tool in the development of healthcare services.
You’ll learn how healthcare organisations operate in today’s climate whilst developing the full range of management skills needed to help organisations achieve their strategic ambitions, exploring insights from the business world to further your understanding. You’ll be able to use these skills to develop approaches to management and leadership, and be well equipped to put in place mechanisms which support the development of organisational learning.
You'll explore the important social factors, and others, which influence managing and leading both organisations and individuals, learning with other current and aspiring managers and leaders from a range of health and social care organisations from around the world.
Our Masters degree will equip you with the knowledge, skills and emotional tools you need to meet today's healthcare challenges. Key topics include:
- Resilience and prevention of disasters
- Leadership, management and change management skills
- Shared interprofessional/multidisciplinary learning
- Inter-professional/interagency working
- Accountability
- Ethical decision-making and its application to practice
- Critical reflection on professional practice
Modules
In order to successfully complete your master's degree you will need to complete 4 core modules and 1 optional module.
Modules are subject to change and availability.
Organisational Transformation in Health and Social Care
Health and social care institutions (e.g. NHS) are continuously striving to improve themselves and attain excellence against a backdrop of relentless change. The ability to accept rapid and significant change as an inevitable consequence of life is a pre-requisite for organisational survival. We’ll cover the ability of organisations to adopt change rather than merely adapt to it as one of the major hallmarks of a learning organisation. You’ll discover how organisational learning becomes the mechanism by which organisational competencies can keep pace with national, local or international challenges. The development of whole-system change initiatives have become the cornerstone; the gold standard approach in managing complex change manifested through individuals who seek to improve service delivery.
Change is inevitable, and it is readily accepted that to remain the same increases organisational risk, however, applying change management strategies to complex and high challenge organisations can be a difficult yet essential task in today's pursuit of organisational efficiencies. You’ll explore change theory, strategic formation alongside organisational change, the application of advanced technologies and the resilience requirements of your organisation.
Global Leadership
You’ll learn about leadership styles, emotional intelligence and will have the opportunity to learn about your own leadership traits and styles. Leaders predominantly create context and together we’ll explore the skills required to successfully mould and develop the context in a complex evolving environment.
We’ll examine the fitness of health and social care institutions to tackle urgent global issues. It consists of three elements: 1) effective decision making 2) adoption of a global approach, and 3) creation of a new business paradigm. We consider the related concept of 'MisLeadership', which looks at how leaders have often failed to achieve the optimum outcomes for those they lead.
Advancing Professional Decision Making (Optional)
Responding to the continuously changing nature of service design and redesign of health and social care systems. We’ll support you, as health and social care practitioners, to develop and extend your role for advanced practice as you prepare for more autonomous and more integrated organisational roles and functions. You’ll possess the knowledge and skills to take and implement complex decisions in a rapidly changing health and social care sector environment. As advanced practitioners, you’ll have the potential to contribute to the need for organisational transformations across the care sectors.
This is particularly important in advanced organisational practice, and we’ll encourage you to focus on new or advanced areas of service development for effective organisational decision making. You’ll need to be able to utilise both strategic and operational decision-making skills at an advanced level to accommodate national, and where relevant international, strategic intentions with local implementation needs and adjustments.
Organisational and Individual Disaster Resilience (Optional)
Disasters (e.g. floods and earthquakes), pandemics (e.g. COVID-19), major emergencies and many other situations and events cause disruptions to the operation of health and social care. These disruptions often reduce effectiveness and threaten health and social care continuity. Health and social care services are highly dependent on an interdisciplinary set of parameters such as infrastructure, management and human resources all of which are essential for the continuity of these critical services and demonstrate the complexity of these services.
We’ll equip you to assess and improve the resilience of your organisation. Responding to communities’ need for more effective and less interruptive health and social care services, by integrating resilience in the way the organisation operates. You’ll reflect on this complexity and the interdisciplinary nature of these services whether you are from medical, paramedical, military, engineering, or other backgrounds. You’ll specifically develop broad and detailed knowledge about the components of risks, disaster typologies, vulnerability assessment, emergency complexities and disaster response phases.
We’ll provide a framework, which’ll allow you to recognise the need for resilience, and to demonstrate capability to assess and address at least one of its key parameters that has the potential to affect the continuity of health or social care service.
Postgraduate Research Design
This module is designed to give you the necessary tools to identify and plan research in order to address real-world problems within your practice, or address existing knowledge gaps within your field. The module will provide a framework allowing you to propose and justify a research question and design appropriate to your professional practice.
Major Project
The Major Project, central to the Masters award, enables you to demonstrate your ability to synthesise learning from previous modules and use your learning as the basis for planning, conducting and writing up a research or work-based project.
Assessment
How you’ll be assessed will vary between modules. This is in order to assist you in developing submission evidence for Management and Leadership professional recognition later. Assignments include the production of reports, essays, a portfolio and Major Project.
Meet your tutors
Dr Nebil Achour, PhD, MSc, BSc
Nebil is our Course Leader for the MSc and has a vast amount of expertise in the resilience of healthcare to major hazards, about which he has published over 50 scientific articles and reports. He was also a member of the global WHO Hospital Safety Index revision panel.
After gaining a BSc in Civil Engineering from the Tunis Advanced School of Science and Technology, Tunisia, Dr Achour worked in private engineering and design firms on designing structures and training engineers in several countries. Granted a Japanese Government Scholarship to further his education, he gained his MSc with a focus on the response of hospital lifeline systems following seismic activities and his PhD on hospital's fragility assessment in 2004 and 2007 respectively from Kanazawa University.
Following his graduation he was then employed as a Post-doctoral Researcher in his graduate University. He joined Loughborough University in September 2007 as a Research Associate. He coordinated the research activities of the £11 million HaCIRIC research centre, and the CPM WBDL MSc Course. He was awarded the Best Paper Award during the CIB World Congress 2010, and the Highly Commended Paper in the 2016 and 2015 Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence.
Nebil is actively involved in national and international research and consultancy activities and interested in exchanging knowledge with academics and practitioners, specifically those working on similar topics.
How you'll study
Our MSc Healthcare Management is studied 100% online.
You’ll study through Canvas, our world-class online Learning Management System (LMS), which can be accessed from your phone, PC or tablet at home or on the move. Canvas provides instant access to study materials, forums, and support from tutors and classmates, as well as enabling easy submission of your assignments.
On successful completion of your studies you’ll be invited to attend a graduation ceremony on campus. If attending the ceremony in person is not possible then we’ll arrange to have your certificate sent to you.
Supported distance learning
We understand that distance learning is different to traditional campus study and if you’re new to online study you may have concerns or apprehensions about studying your masters in healthcare management, via distance learning and that’s natural.
To help put your mind at ease we have a dedicated Distance Learning Support Team to help and support you throughout your time at ARU, starting with your first online induction and staying with you right through to graduation. In addition, you’ll also be supported by specialist healthcare management module tutors who use a range of teaching methods, and are well experienced in supporting distance learning students.
Once you start your MSc Healthcare Management, we encourage the creation of online communities and many of our learners find these connections with others invaluable, helping them to stay motivated, share concerns or make new friendships.
Contact us to talk through any questions or concerns.
Careers
What could an MSc Healthcare Management do for my career prospects?
In recent years, the healthcare industry has experienced demand like never before in both public and private sectors.
And with it has arisen an urgent need for leaders who truly understand how best to run health organisations in order to provide the best possible care for patients.
But as leading organisations like the WHO and the NHS recognise a shortage of skilled and capable leaders in the arena of healthcare management, it remains an intensely competitive environment in which those with the know-how to enact change and drive progress will stand out from the crowd instantly. Whether you’re looking to strengthen an existing leadership position or are new to healthcare management and aiming to progress, an online Masters in Healthcare Management will equip you with an invaluable understanding of the challenges of health leadership and an inclusive managerial perspective that allows you to identify challenges and solutions as they arise.
What job roles can I consider with a healthcare management masters degree?
Healthcare Management MSc graduates will already be working in the health and social care Industry with ambitions to progress to mid-level and senior roles within the sector. Examples of job roles Healthcare Management MSc graduates may consider, potentially with more training and experience depending on their starting point, are:
- Nursing Home Supervisor/Manager/Director
- Children's Home Supervisor/Manager/Director
- Supported Housing Care Supervisor/Manager/Director
- Social Worker
- Health Service Supervisor/Manager/Director
- Hospice Supervisor/Manager/Director
What skills will I get from a masters in healthcare management to help my career?
Choosing to study a Healthcare Management MSc will give you many transferable skills; here are just some of them:
- Ability to Initiate change
- Develop strong leadership skills
- Work well with multi-disciplinary and inter-agency teams
- Critically reflect and apply research methods
What can I study after a Healthcare Management MSc?
Depending on your long-term goals and interests you may decide to explore a doctorate qualification. Having a master’s degree under your belt is a key entry requirement in opening doors to study at this level.
Careers Advice Service
Once you become an ARU student you will be able to access our Employability service to help you at whatever stage of your career, whether that’s landing your dream job or the next progression step.
We offer:
- careers advice, including one-to-one online and telephone appointments with our experienced advisers
- help with your CV, job searches, applications and interview preparation
- an online portal packed with useful careers resources
- our Employability Programme, which helps you hone the skills employers say they want in graduates.
Entry requirements
- Applicants should ideally have a good first degree or equivalent and be currently working in, or have recently worked within, the arena of Management and Leadership in healthcare.
A professional qualification isn’t a necessity for access to the course, but you must meet the criteria above and demonstrate a strong interest in Management and Leadership.
- You will need to provide evidence that a satisfactory Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) clearance has been undertaken.
- If you have lived outside of the UK for 6 months or more within the last 5 years then you will need to provide a police check from the country/countries previously resided in
- If you are completing placements overseas you will be required to obtain a police check/certificate of good conduct from the relevant country
- If English is not your first language, you will be expected to demonstrate a certificated level of proficiency of at least IELTS 6.5 or equivalent.
As a distance learner, you'll also need a suitable computer with internet connection, together with sufficient IT competence to make effective use of our online learning management system (LMS) with high-speed internet and email.
For non-graduates, non-traditional entry routes to the course may be possible by clearly demonstrating on your application that your qualifications and experience are equivalent to an Honours degree.
For military students: Various entry points are available depending on accreditation against military training. You can find out more on our Healthcare Management MSc (Armed Forces) course page.
Fees & funding
Fees
The full tuition fee for this course is £7,700.
The tuition fees you pay each year for the full Healthcare Management MSc will be £3,850. The course is studied over 2 years.
Accredited prior learning may reduce the tuition fees. This will be confirmed once your application has been submitted.
Funding
Your course can be fully funded by the new Postgraduate Student Loans now available (subject to eligibility).
We offer payment by instalments, so you can spread the cost of studying with us.
For military students: You can use your ELCs towards this course. Anglia Ruskin University is a recognised ELCAS provider (number 1007). Please contact your Learning Centre for details of ELC, eligibility and how to apply.
For more information on how you fund your studies please see our funding page.
What our students say
The Healthcare MSc is probably one of the most exciting courses I have done professionally. The course content was focused and related to my work environment and stimulated my leadership skills. It tested my areas for improvement and pushed my confidence to partake in new challenges.
David
The MSc has allowed me to think more strategically and improve my confidence with articulating deficiencies, risks and opportunities. I feel I have grown as a senior manager by using the management theories and models and applying them to my work.
The course has given me a deeper understanding of the challenges of leadership in health and social care and a chance to make a positive contribution towards solving these problems. What a privilege!
ARU was a great choice that allowed me to achieve my personal and professional ambitions. I felt supported, empowered, and accomplished.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why study a Healthcare Management MSc?
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Who studies an MSc Healthcare Management?
Why study healthcare management masters online?
Next application deadline:
31st October 2023
