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Allergy affects around one fifth of the world’s population. With allergic diseases and asthma on the rise, the complexity and severity of these conditions is also increasing. Children and young adults are particularly affected and are bearing the greatest burden of these trends. Yet allergy, even as it relates to asthma, is often trivialised and clinical services to help patients with such diseases are often either non-existent or limited and lacking in cost-effective solutions.
Why study MSc Allergy?
Our MSc Allergy programme is designed to help healthcare professionals to gain a greater understanding of allergic diseases and to be able to translate this knowledge into their everyday practice. Offered by a World Allergy Organisation Centre of Excellence, our programme draws on the clinical, research and education strengths at Southampton, and will help you develop better treatment for patients. Our programme will bring you up to date with current best practice, allowing you to improve management of patients with allergies. It will also give you the skills to share your allergy knowledge with colleagues and patients.
What does our MSc provide?
You will be enabled to support adults, children and young people more effectively; develop and improve your healthcare provision through passing on expertise; and develop scientific understanding, clinical knowledge, practical skills and critical thinking qualities.
Who should study?
The multi-disciplinary nature of our programme means that it is suitable for GPs, hospital based doctors, nurses, dietitians and scientists involved with both adult and paediatric patients.
Flexible learning
Our part-time (2-5 years) and full-time (1 year) modular Masters programme provides the flexibility to study alongside other commitments. Typically modules are offered in blocks of three to five days to cater students living outside the area and internationally. The programme also accommodates a ‘step on step off’ structure allowing you single modules (see module tab for full details), the Postgraduate Certificate or Postgraduate Diploma in Allergy as well as the full MSc.
We provide an integrated programme for both adult and paediatric disease with a balanced clinical and scientific curriculum. The programme aims to develop knowledge and understanding of the mechanisms and management of allergic disease and offers practical training in methods used to diagnose them. Our course is supported by internationally renowned specialists, and we provide a high level of support, be it hospital based or distance learning. Our interprofessional approach enables students from different disciplines and professions to interact and learn from each other and will teach you how to build and work successfully in allergy teams.
This postgraduate programme is designed to help you treat your patients better; we provide health care professionals with effective education and training in the mechanisms, diagnosis, treatment and management of allergic disease. Our course will enable you to manage both adults and children with allergy more effectively.
Through the knowledge and understanding you will gain with us, you will also be able to develop and improve your health care provision, through your ability to cascade education to your colleagues, and adult and paediatric patients and their families.
Tailored content
Course content can be tailored to best meet individual career aspirations and organisational needs, allowing you to plan your specific programme route at the start of your studies with us, and providing an opportunity to gain important skills for meeting current best practice guidelines.
Modules
Our core modules are the Foundations of Allergic Disease, Clinical Research Skills and a Dissertation. We also offer three specialist allergy modules (i) Eczema, Urticaria and Anaphylaxis, (ii) Food Allergy, (iii) Allergic Airways Disease, the Work Based Learning module where you will translate your new knowledge into practice and the Teaching the Teachers to Teach module where you will gain skills for teaching or training students, collegaues and peers. Other modules from around the University, In addition to the allergy modules on offer, students are also able to take a module from around the University (please visit the Modules tab for details).
Research training
All MSc students receive training in research skills and statistics in preparation for their dissertation in the form of our core Clinical Research Skills module.
Teaching
To help you develop the required skills you will be exposed to a variety of teaching and learning methods including seminars, tutorials, discussions, practical’s, problem-solving activities and formal lectures. You will also be able to access our unique online educational and multimedia learning resources.
Our teaching methods also help enhance your written and oral presentation skills, giving you the opportunity to develop your transferable skills.
Each of our modules involves discussion of key issues; practice in applying concepts, both orally and in writing, including analysis and interpretation of material; and feedback on work produced.
By studying this programme you will:
Visit the programme specification document for this course
This postgraduate course provides relevant, up-to-date experience of food safety management, which is of vital importance both to organisations and individuals in the food industry, enforcement and education. MSc Food Safety Management focuses on the important areas of foodborne disease, food safety hazards and the effective management of food safety through application of the risk management system Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP). An online course, Food Safety Management provides learning units and support materials via a secure website. This includes individual and group activities, including live web-seminars, research tasks and case studies provide practical learning opportunities.
Awards: MSc (After one year - PGCert HACCP Development, after two years - PGDip HACCP Audit and Management).
Within the last few years, there has been widespread agreement that to improve the safety of our food and promote consumer confidence in safe food production, a system known as Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) is applied throughout the food industry. As a result, European legislation requires all food businesses to implement a system based on HACCP principles.
Challenges for food businesses, include not only development of suitable HACCP-based systems but on-going management and verification to assure HACCP effectiveness
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Knowledge and Understanding
Subject-specific skills
Thinking Skills
Detailed learning materials are all available online. Each topic of study involves a number of learning activities supported by asynchronous discussions, live web-cast workshops and chat activities. To take full advantage of the course, you will need the following software:
Assessment is done in a number of different ways including a report on an outbreak of foodborne disease, a personal portfolio, critical analysis of papers and case studies. There are no examinations.
Respiratory illnesses affect all children. Almost every child in the UK attends their GP in the first 5 years of life with a respiratory infection. 1 in 10 children have some chronic respiratory condition of which asthma is the most common. Despite the commonness of respiratory disorders, the presence of good evidenced-based guidelines care and outcomes vary widely. Provision of care is even more varied for rarer conditions and where there have been recent important advances in technology. There is a pressing need to facilitate training in primary, secondary and tertiary care to ensure that children achieve the best possible health outcomes.
This course allows students to learn how to provide optimum care for children with acute and chronic respiratory diseases. Each of the four modules has been designed to complement clinical experience and accelerate learning and professional development. The modules tackle asthma and allergy, cystic fibrosis, infection and immunity and non-invasive ventilation and sleep. Taken in combination they cover the breadth of knowledge required to deliver secondary care services for children and they complement the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health Special Interest module in Paediatric Respiratory Medicine. Delivered by an experienced local faculty with an enthusiasm for teaching and national and international reputation for paediatric respiratory medicine this course offers a combination of self-directed, interactive and practical learning.
The aim of the course is to help clinicians in primary and secondary care settings to develop their knowledge base, enhance their skills and motivate and empower them to act as effective leaders in the delivery of respiratory healthcare for children.
Career Development
This course recognises that clinicians require a combination of knowledge, skills and experience to support the delivery of optimal healthcare for children. Whilst completion of all four modules will be particularly helpful to secondary care paediatricians with a stated special interest in paediatric respiratory medicine individual modules are likely to be of particular interest to those working in specific environments. For instance, doctors and nurses working in primary care are likely to find the module on asthma and allergy particularly helpful. Similarly, the module on non-invasive ventilation and sleep may be particularly valuable to clinicians working on high dependency units or those who support community teams who look after technology-dependent children.
Each module is given a credit rating within the national Masters framework. These may be transferable from or to other institutions where the learning outcomes are comparable. Undertaking all four currently available modules will lead to the award of a postgraduate certificate in Medical Science. Individuals who wish to proceed to higher degrees may choose to undertake further credits as part of other Masters programmes.
(The Masters Degree must be completed within five years of registration, the Diploma within four years and the Certificate within three years. It will be possible to complete a Masters Degree in Medical Science in two years.)
It is not necessary to carry out a piece of original research to complete the award. The final 60 credits can be for a practice-based project, a teaching project such as robust evaluation of a programme you might be running, or it may be possible to accumulate credits from independent studies or a reflective portfolio. Individual programmes will be constructed for you at this stage through negotiation with the award leader.
This is a modular part-time programme, designed to meet the needs of full-time health professionals, able to take study leave in short blocks (2-days face-to-face teaching for each module) and augmented by background reading and independent study. The modules are offered on a regular basis throughout the year, usually repeated annually, and students can join the programme at any stage. It is possible to complete the PG Certificate within one year, though up to three years are allowed.
Most teaching is based on interactive small group methods, interspersed with practical tasks and supplemented with background reading and materials developed by the course faculty. A variety of assessment methods are used, including essays skills and completion of a portfolio.
Apart from additional costs for text books, inter-library loans and potential overdue library fines we do not anticipate any additional costs for this postgraduate programme.
Find information on Scholarships here - http://www.keele.ac.uk/studentfunding/bursariesscholarships/
The course will enable biomedical & clinical students (including research midwives and nurses) to develop an academic and contemporary understanding of the biological and environmental influences that impact on pregnancy and the lifelong physical and mental wellbeing health of women and their infants
Students will gain insight and knowledge of how translation of basic science and clinical observation can lead to cutting edge research studies into new diagnostic and treatments both in the UK and in low resource settings globally. .
Students will develop scientific and clinical practical research skills, including statistics, so that they can confidently critically evaluate others research design and results, and apply these to their own research. They will also be given the necessary research knowledge and skills to design, plan, navigate research governance pathways, and conduct and analyse their own research project. Both scientific and clinical research projects are offered.
The MSc Women and Children's Health comprises three core taught modules, including ‘Fundamentals of Womens and Children’s Health’ which covers health and disease from the periconception period to birth and early childhood. Research led lectures will cover topics such as infertility, pre-pregnancy health, placentation, preeclampsia; immunology of pregnancy and autoimmune disease, metabolic disease in pregnancy, parturition and dysfunctional labour, miscarriage and preterm birth, lactation and infant nutrition, the developing brain and prematurity, childhood diet and dental health, premature infant and the neonatal lung, gut microbiome, obesity, childhood allergy, epigenetics and lifelong health, nutrition and global health and perinatal mental health.
The other required taught modules are Statistics and Research Governance, and Scientific and Clinical Research skills followed by an intensive six month core research projectwithin a lab or clinical research group.
Students can also select 1-2 optional taught module(s) to tailor the course to their developing interests, examples include Perinatal Mental Health, Ethics in Child Health, Regenerative Medicine, Principles of Implementation and Improvement, Science, Leadership and Management, Birth Defects, Assisted Conception, Regenerative Medicine and Global Women's Health.
The programme fosters intellectual skills of students through:
Teaching
A typical week would be have approximately 10-15 hours teaching with the remaining hours dedicated to self-guided learning. In the final semester, research projects are full time with hours dedicated to practical and data collection, data analysis and writing.
You will study via a combination of lectures, journal clubs, group discussions, practicals, workshops and independent study.
Peer feedback, in course assignments such as data handling, research project and project report write-up, journal club, presentations and essays. All will be actively encouraged throughout the research project.
Typically, one credit equates to 10 hours of work.
Assessment
We will assess you through a combination of coursework, seen/unseen written exams, essays, problem directed learning exercises, case studies, ethical problem debate, data-handling, creation of clinical study materials such as patient information sheets and consent forms, research proposal, oral presentations, and a final research project report.
The study time and assessment methods detailed above are typical and give you a good indication of what to expect. However, they may change if the course modules change.
The course will prepare scientists and clinicians for further research into Womens & Children’s Health
Immunology is linked to our ability to remain healthy and free of disease - fighting off infections and disease and understanding our genetic factors and risk factors in inheriting disease. You look at behavioural factors and their links to disease to understand protection methods and you go into the detail of bioinformatics and genomics to understand DNA and analyse within practical research when you test for specific issues such as stress, hunger and so on and responses in the body.
The programme is designed for you to develop your academic knowledge of immunology and its relevance to disease with analysis and research skills designed to enhance your career prospects, or continue to PhD. You can use your training within educational establishments to apply training, work in patents, science outreach and public engagement.
Focusing on the relevance of the immune response in the maintenance of health and development of disease, graduates will be able to attain the intellectual and practical skills needed to address both theoretical and technical aspects of modern biomedical research.
In common with the other molecular biosciences Masters courses, the MSc in Immunology & Immunotherapy builds on recent advances in genomics to understand the generation of immunological diversity at a cellular level, how this imparts variability in immune responses at the individual and population level and the relevance of the immune system in disease areas such as autoimmunity, cancer, allergy and microbial infections.
You may also be interested in the Scottish Innovation Centres research and enterprise work with companies in Scotland to find out more about the possibilities in this area of health science and spin-out research going on from Aberdeen and other universities:
Semester 1
Semester 2
Find out more detail by visiting the programme web page
Find out about fees:
*Please be advised that some programmes have different tuition fees from those listed above and that some programmes also have additional costs.
View all funding options on our funding database via the programme page
Find out more about:
Find out more about living in Aberdeen and living costs
Nutritional medicine concerns itself with the part that nutrition plays in health, disease, lifecycle and ageing.
The aim of the programme is to inform and educate those to whom the public turns for advice on nutritionally-related aspects of health and disease and those involved in the manufacture of foods and food supplements.
It is appropriate for the in-service training of doctors, dietitians, pharmacists and healthcare workers.
The programme consists of three-day taught periods at the University, preceded by preparatory study, and followed by consolidation and assessment. It will teach you to take a critical and scholarly approach to the theory, practice, literature and research findings within the subject.
This programme is studied part-time. On successful completion of the programme the exit awards are as follows
On successful completion of the MSc programme, students are eligible for direct entry on to the UK Voluntary Register of Nutritionists as an Associate Nutritionist via the Association for Nutrition. Students who exit with a Diploma or Certificate would still be eligible to apply for Associate Nutritionist Membership, via the Portfolio- based application pathway.
Students may also enrol for modules on an occasional route with or without assessment. Please contact us for further details.
Example module listing
The following modules are indicative, reflecting the information available at the time of publication. Please note that not all modules described are compulsory and may be subject to teaching availability and/or student demand.
Distance learning prior to attendance at the module
You will receive some preliminary material (that will require approximately 40 hours of study) around four weeks before you attend each module.
This will generally be background material (for example, a core text and/or specially written material/journal article/s) aimed at ensuring that all students, whatever their previous learning experience, will have attained a certain basic knowledge of the subject and its terminology.
Teaching at the University
The three-day periods spent at the University consist mainly of formal lectures, but will also include interactive or participative sessions incorporating some of the following learning strategies: workshops, syndicated work, demonstrations, case studies, debates, and journal clubs.
You will generally be given additional papers, reviews, notes or reading lists relating to the module lectures.
Distance learning following attendance at the module
In the two months following the module, you will be expected to study the material covered and to carry out further reading (including journal articles) to expand your understanding.
The programme is appropriate for GPs, gastroenterologists, dietitians, pharmacists, other clinicians and health professionals with a role in nutrition and health practice.
The aim of the programme is to provide Masters-level learning in Nutritional Science related to health and disease. Students will gain knowledge and skills necessary to investigate, understand and apply the concepts of Nutritional Medicine in relation to current health issues. Specifically, the programme aims:
We often give our students the opportunity to acquire international experience during their degrees by taking advantage of our exchange agreements with overseas universities.
In addition to the hugely enjoyable and satisfying experience, time spent abroad adds a distinctive element to your CV.
The Advanced Paediatrics MSc course is a multidisciplinary master’s degree designed for doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other allied health professionals. This advanced study programme concentrates on expanding your research and evidence-based evaluation skills in clinical practice and leadership, as well as enhancing your career opportunities in research and academia.
The Advanced Paediatrics MSc will provide you with a detailed understanding of research methods and statistics applied to the provision of child health, as well as the knowledge and understanding to conduct reliable methodological research projects. You will be working with an established faculty with advanced knowledge of the management processes in NHS Trusts.
The course is made up of optional and required modules and offers you the flexibility to study either full or part-time. You will explore a range of required modules such as Paediatric Research: Methods, Statistical Application & Governance, Service Delivery & Management, Leadership & Professional Development as well as Ethics & Child Health and a dissertation. You must take modules totalling 180 credits to complete the course, where 60 credits will come from a research project and dissertation of around 15,000 words. If you are studying full-time, you will complete the course in one year, from September to September. If you are studying part-time, your programme will take two years to complete, you will take the required modules in the first year, and the dissertation in your second year.
Teaching
You will be taught through a combination of lectures, seminars and self study.
Regulating body
King’s College is regulated by the Higher Education Funding Council for England.
Location
The course is primarily taught at the King’s College London Denmark Hill, Waterloo and Guy’s campuses. Please note that locations are determined by where each module is taught and may vary depending on the optional modules you select.
Many of our graduates have gone onto further research in funded PhD programmes. All of our students who have applied for National Grid training in a speciality have been successful and the feedback has been outstanding.
