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Palliative Care

MSc

This distance learning course, designed for healthcare professionals across the world, gives you the opportunity to engage with different perspectives of palliative practice in your own setting. This can range from the acute hospital setting through to hospice and care at home, in diverse countries and cultures. The focus of the programme is to enable you to gain knowledge and understanding of topics relevant to your practice.

Why
Teaching & Assessment
Careers
Entry Requirements
Fees/Funding
Your Application

Why study Palliative Care at Dundee?

"Palliative care improves the quality of life of patients and families who face life-threatening illness, by providing pain and symptom relief, spiritual and psychosocial support from diagnosis to the end of life and bereavement."
WHO, 2002

The MSc Palliative Care will enable you to gain a wider understanding of delivering and managing challenges that relate to palliative care practice. As you study this course by distance learning, while continuing to work in your current healthcare role, you will be able to put the theory you learn into practice straight away.

"It has influenced my practice in many areas, improving the attention given to the palliative patients, at their homes, in primary care and at the emergency room at the hospital."
Student comment, 2012

What's so good about studying Palliative Care at Dundee?

The programme combines the expertise and experience of academics, clinicians and researchers across the School of Nursing and Midwifery, all of whom have extensive teaching and e-learning experience.

Cross cutting themes explored within the programme include:

values and attitudes
patient-centered interpersonal skills
multi-professional team work
ethical issues and decision making
national and global political issues
education for client and the practitioner
questioning through research and evidence based practice
quality assurance & audit

"I have enjoyed studying as an online student, which originally was very scary. My tutor and programme leader have been very supportive and guided me whenever I was lost, this experience has made me proud of the University of Dundee and I would encourage many students out there who can not get exclusive time for study to enrol on this distance learning Program, for they can receive every kind of support they require to succeed and achieve knowledge, skills and positive attitudes towards learning and finally a qualification!"
Comment from student evaluation, 2012

Who should study this course?

This programme is designed for healthcare professionals (clinical professionals, allied health professionals, policy planners, general managers) working in a palliative care setting at a local, national or global level, including, for example an international charity, aid agency or Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), especially in low/medium income countries.

Related courses

Teaching & Assessment

This course is taught by staff based in the School of Nursing and Midwifery .

This is a distance learning programme, to be administered via the University's Virtual Learning Environment, My Dundee, and will take 3 years to complete. Start dates are September and January.

How you will be taught

This is a part-time distance learning programme (three years) enabling participation from national and international students.

This part-time distance learning approach to the programme design will allow you to study in your home country whilst engaged in practice, providing you with opportunities to directly apply the programme content to impact on your sphere of professional practice.

We deliver the online programme using the Blackboard Learning System, the University's virtual learning environment (also referred to as MyDundee). The programme is intended to be interactive and supportive, giving you the opportunity to share ideas, knowledge and experience and to discuss and debate issues. Access to journal articles will be available as part of the resource provided for each module.

What you will study

There are three core modules each worth 30 credits:

Palliative Care: Exploring professional principles and values - appraise critically the contribution of palliative care within your own professional and health care setting. You will then explore your own role and its potential for development within this environment.
Delivering person-centred Palliative Care - explore critically "how" palliative care is delivered using a person-centred approach and gain the tools to achieve this.
Developing research and evaluation skills - extend and develop skills required for critical inquiry, problem-solving and evidence-based practice by exploring a range of methods for research and evaluation. On completion of this module you will be able to identify and analyse a palliative care issue and to propose a study design which has potential to strengthen palliative care systems.

You will also complete one option module of 30 credits, chosen from:

Holistic approach to Palliative Care
Practice development: Independent study
Children and young people's Palliative Care: Interprofessional perspectives

Your choice of module will enable you to focus on areas that are of particular relevance to your own professional practice.

Finally, you will complete a dissertation, worth 60 credits. The dissertation gives you the opportunity to develop and demonstrate, under supervision, your academic, organisational and technical skills in the formulation, execution and writing-up of a research project investigating a topic pertaining to palliative care, or a systematic review of an aspect of palliative care or policy.

Modules can also be undertaken on a stand-alone basis with the exception of the second core module which is only available for students who have undertaken the first core module.

How you will be assessed

Each module is assessed on a written academic paper, which allows you to apply the theory to your practice.

Careers

The recognition of palliative care as a basic human right (Brennan 2007) has provided the impetus for the development of palliative care services in low middle to middle income countries (e.g. in Sub-Saharan Africa) and there is now a need for appropriately qualified and experienced individuals to take this forward.

From current vacancy listings in NGOs, promotion for promoted posts almost always requires a combination of work experience and a relevant Masters level degree.

This programme has been developed from our previous Masters in Palliative Care, which was very successful in regard to student employment.

Dr Zipporah Ali, as National Co-ordinator of the Kenya Hospice and Palliative Care Association has utilised within her role her enhanced education in specific palliative care issues to advocate for palliative strategies as an essential aspect of treatment for patients with non-communicable diseases.

David Makumi is the manager of a cancer programme at the Aga Khan University Hospital, Nairobi. In April 2011 David was the first African recipient of the 2011 Oncology Nursing Society International Award for his contributions to Cancer Care.

Entry Requirements

For entry to the MSc Palliative Care programme students must hold a professional qualification in a health or social care discipline and a degree.

English Language Requirement: IELTS of 6.5 overall, with no component less than 6.0 (or equivalent), if your first language is not English. Please check our Language Requirements page for details of equivalent grades from other test providers, and information about the University of Dundee English Language courses.

Fees and Funding

Academic Year	Home/EU	Overseas	LMC *
2012-13	£760 per 30 credit module, £1,520 per 60 credit module, plus £1,200 for dissertation	£1,940 per 30 credit module, £3,880 per 60 credit module, plus £2,730 for dissertation	£980 per 30 credit module, £1,960 per 60 credit module, plus £1,385 for dissertation
2013-14	to be confirmed
For more information on fees, visit the School of Nursing & Midwifery website. * LMC = low & middle income countries

Sources of Funding

The School of Nursing & Midwifery is not currently offering any school scholarships.

Other sources of funding for postgraduate students can be found on our Scholarships webpage.

Your Application

How to Apply

Apply using the Nursing & Midwifery Taught Postgraduate Application Form, which can be downloaded from the School of Nursing and Midwifery webpage.

Course Contact

Pauline Horton
School of Nursing and Midwifery
11 Airlie Place
Dundee DD1 4HJ

Telephone: 01382 381961 (from the UK)
Telephone: +44 1382 381961 (from outside the UK)

Fax: 01382 381981 (from the UK)
Fax: +44 1382 381981 (from outside the UK)

Email: p.j.horton@dundee.ac.uk

Admissions Contact

Postgraduate Admissions
Post Graduate
School of Nursing and Midwifery
11 Airlie Place
Dundee
DD1 4HJ

Telephone: 01382 388534 (from the UK)
Telephone: +44 1382 388534(from outside the UK)

Email: nm-post-graduate@dundee.ac.uk