Evidence Based Health Care MSc

University of Oxford

The MSc in Evidence-Based Health Care is designed to help health professionals base clinical and health management decisions on valid, reliable and relevant evidence.

The MSc in Evidence-Based Health Care 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 health care. It can be taken part-time alongside work commitments, generally over two to four years.

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

This programme 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.

Course structure

The MSc in Evidence-Based Health Care is a part-time course. There are two compulsory modules, four option modules and a dissertation.

You will take the following two compulsory modules:

• Practice of Evidence-Based Health Care
• Introduction to Study Design and Research Methods

You will then choose an additional four modules from the following options currently available:

• Clinical Trial Management
• Mixed Methods in Health Research
• Knowledge into Action
• Evidence-based Diagnosis and Screening
• Introduction to Statistics for Health Care Research
• Systematic Reviews
• Randomised Controlled Trials
• Qualitative Research Methods
• Essential Medical Statistics
• History and Philosophy of Evidence-Based Health Care
• Teaching Evidence-Based Practice
• Realist Reviews and Realist Evaluation
• Complex Reviews
• Meta-analysis
• Statistics for Clinical Trials
• Big Data Epidemiology

The majority of modules are run over either an eight, or fifteen week learning cycle. Most modules are either delivered fully online or in a blended format, however, some modules are only delivered with a blended format that includes a five day attendance in Oxford, and some are only run entirely online. In any given year, not all delivery formats for a module may be available.