Professional Development in Health and Social Care Top Up

Have experience working in health and social care? Driven to fix issues in your workplace? Wonder what you could change by taking the lead? Join us to learn how to look at the evidence about health, make plans to transform care and progress in your career.

We’ve designed this top-up degree for students working in health, allied health or social care. Build on your diploma or foundation degree qualification and achieve a full honours degree, boosting your employability and providing new opportunities.

This is a distance learning course, meaning you can complete it from anywhere in the world. Our international team is here to support you, whatever time zone you’re in.

Research is an important part of this course. What we teach is inspired by what our academics are working on. You’ll be taught by experts in public health, nursing, leadership, allied health and evidence-based practice.

We challenge you to link your studies to your professional practice through work-based learning. However, if you’re not currently working, we’d still love to talk to you about studying with us.

Clinical & Professional Leadership in Health & Social Care The aim of this module is to help students gain a systematic understanding of current thinking about the processes of facilitating a culture of collaborative and inclusive leadership within complex public sector organisations. It aims to help students to integrate the emergent changes in leadership theory within the practice environment and the impact of applying traditional private-sector leadership styles uncritically within the public sector organisations. It explores the relationship between transactional and transformational leadership and evaluates students' ability to review, consolidate and extend their knowledge within their own leadership role. The module explores how the effects of leadership on clinical teams influence the quality of healthcare. Research Design Students will have the opportunity to explore the research process, methods, data analysis and the ethical considerations associated with health and social care research. The module focuses on issues, techniques and skills for data collection and analysis in quantitative, qualitative or mixed-mode approaches to research. Facilitating Workplace Learning This module supports students who are registered health care professionals to develop confidence and skill in facilitating effective learning in the workplace. Students are expected to analyse the different ways in which adults learn with the aim of enabling them to develop competencies around facilitating and assessing workplace learning. They are required to draw on their own experience of being a learner as well as theoretical perspectives. The workplace is identified as where learners can be facilitated to develop the best opportunities for learning. Difficulties and challenges will be explored which may arise when helping learners in health care practice. Advanced Communication and Supportive Relationships This single module explores verbal and non-verbal communication, and the development of supportive relationships, within a health or social care related context. It aims to build on existing clinical or professional skills and develop them within the student's area of practice. The module promotes a critical approach to sources of knowledge about therapeutic and/ or professional communication and relationships, drawing from nursing, allied health, social care and psychotherapy. Work-Based Learning in Professional Development in Health and Social Care (Double) This work-based learning module enables students to gain recognition and academic credit for learning gained through professional practice or employment. Students develop a work-based learning agreement that specifies the learning outcomes to be achieved, the learning activities, resources required, and the evidence of achievement which will be assessed. The nature of work-based learning is that it is situationally specific and can enhance the student’s knowledge and skill in a relevant and applied way. Dissertation (Double) This dissertation module is designed to support students in developing a research project by exploring a critical area of the students' own practice. It aims to allow students to demonstrate their ability to argue coherently, to gather evidence, to evaluate critically, and to synthesise various sources of data within an appropriate framework. The dissertation should build on the student's past knowledge and experience, by evaluating changes in practice. It provides a vehicle through which students can define a health issue for in-depth analysis. Students will explore secondary data through a literature review.