MSt (flexible) in Genomic Medicine

Educational aims

The overall aims of the programme are to:

• provide professionally relevant teaching and learning informed by research in an integrated clinical and research environment;
• develop and create a cohort of doctors and other professionals allied to medicine able to pursue and develop their roles in the rapidly-changing and challenging environment of genomic medicine;
• prepare healthcare professionals for the adoption of genomic technologies and the increasing use of genomic information as part of the diagnostic and treatment pathway;
• develop researchers competent in the use of genomic technologies for biomedical research
• develop a cohort of health care professionals with the ability and confidence to lead service improvement for safe and high-quality patient care
• develop a cohort of health care professionals allied to medicine with an understanding of research methodologies and clinical opportunities relevant to genomic medicine;
• encourage a commitment to intellectual challenge and evidence-based clinical practice informed by the latest conceptual and theoretical knowledge of genomic medicine;
• develop students' intellectual, practical and transferable skills related to genomic medicine;
• encourage critical thinking related to genomic medicine;
• for the MSt, to conduct systematic research relevant to their professional practice;
• equip students for entry into health care professional training schemes including graduate entry medicine courses;
• prepare students for undertaking research degrees (PhD) in genomic medicine-related research fields;
• provide students from the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and other industries with an understanding of the relevance of advances in genomics for current and future health care.

Knowledge and Understanding

• Enhance students’ knowledge and critical understanding of recent developments in genomic medicine relevant to their present and future roles.
• Develop students’ knowledge and understanding of genomic medicine informed by research in a rapidly changing integrated clinical and research environment.
• Enable deployment of new knowledge in their clinical practice, and have a positive personal impact on the work of others in their clinical team and wider service.
• Develop an understanding of genomic technologies and to be able to use genomic information as part of the diagnostic and treatment pathway.
• Develop students’ knowledge so that they have the confidence to lead service improvement for safe and high-quality patient care.
• Update and extend students’ understanding of research methodologies and clinical opportunities.
• Demonstrate knowledge, abilities and skills to engage in focused, professionally relevant, independent learning, through the production of a dissertation.

Skills and other attributes

• The skills necessary to locate, read, interpret and analyse primary and secondary sources of material enabling the development of a conceptual and theoretical understanding of recent developments in genomic medicine.
• Skills to evaluate current scholarship and research critically and to place this knowledge within the context of their own situation and practice as clinical leaders.
• The ability to formulate a research topic relevant to their clinical context, to collect and analyse primary and/or secondary sources of data, and to undertake professionally relevant research.
• The facility to communicate the results of their ideas, research and its conclusions in a written form acceptable as a work of scholarship potentially publishable in a professional or academic journal.