Evidence Based Health Care (Taught)

The information provided on this page was correct at the time of publication (November 2025). For complete and up-to-date information about this course, please visit the relevant University of Oxford course page via www.graduate.ox.ac.uk/ucas.

The MSc in Evidence-Based Healthcare is a part-time, taught course combining core and optional modules with a dissertation, equipping health professionals to integrate research evidence into clinical and policy decision-making.

The MSc in Evidence-Based Healthcare will position you to integrate the best available research evidence with your clinical expertise and patient values to make better informed decisions in your field of healthcare. It can be taken part-time alongside work commitments, generally over two to four years.

The MSc is a joint course between the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences and the Department for Continuing Education. The course works in collaboration with the renowned Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine in Oxford.

The course has teachers and contributors who are internationally recognised leaders in the field of evidence-based practice and teaching. The flexible structure of the course has been devised to fit with the structure of specialist training and to accommodate student choice.

The aims of the course are for you to:

• find and appraise quantitative and qualitative research evidence critically and efficiently and understand what the results mean in different contexts and for different healthcare decisions

• integrate and synthesise different sorts of information, from diverse sources, when making both individual patient and health policy decisions in a wide range of situations

• work comfortably in situations of uncertainty and make sound judgements in the absence of definitive evidence

• understand how to work with colleagues to make informed decisions based on evidence and operate effectively in a variety of team roles

• understand, apply and evaluate the process of translating knowledge into action within a healthcare system

• present and communicate information about research evidence and evidence-based practice clearly in written, electronic and oral forms to a range of audiences

• be able to produce a robust research protocol, for a variety of different types of research question, in a format that can be submitted as an application for research funding

• be able to play a lead role in the conduct and presentation of research according to Good Clinical Practice.