The Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) calls family doctors "our rising stars of the future". This reflects WHO’s renewed commitment to build family medicine as a specialty across all regions. Strengthening family medicine has been recognized as a key component of achieving Universal Health Coverage as part of the Sustainable Development Goals to which every country committed at the last United Nations General Assembly. This degree aims to build on this momentum for strengthening primary care by developing competent family physicians who are empowered to become leaders and advocates for the future of the profession.
The University of Edinburgh provides high quality postgraduate medical education in through an online distance learning format. Students are from a variety of countries across the world, each bringing their unique experiences to create a vibrant global learning community. The programme will give doctors the essential medical knowledge and management skills for the common presenting health issues and explore management within the context of the principles, processes, and practices of family medicine. The programme will equip students with the skills to become expert family physicians whose approach will provide continuous, coordinated, comprehensive and cost effective care build around an understanding of the patient in the context of the family and the community.
The degree is awarded by the University of Edinburgh and is taught in partnership with the Christian Medical College, Vellore, India. Experienced members of the International Christian Medical and Dental Association (ICMDA) are also involved in delivering teaching and supervising students.
This blended distance learning programme is delivered via the Moodle platform with the support of our partner institution CMC Vellore, India. Students have access to comprehensive learning materials as well as the University of Edinburgh’s library resources. Online tutorials are delivered regularly by experts in the field.
There are seven compulsory courses and a dissertation. Courses cover:
The dissertation provides the opportunity for the student to undertake an extended piece of scholarship in an area of personal interest and is undertaken in the last few months of the programme.
The online teaching is complemented by a two week period of face-to-face teaching each year. This builds on the online content and provides practical clinical training. This teaching is currently delivered in four sites across the world: India, Nigeria, Uganda and Egypt. Attendance provides the unique opportunity to travel and view the practice of Family Medicine in other countries whilst meeting and learning from fellow students.
In addition there is the opportunity to participate in a 30 days clinical internship following completion of the Masters qualification. This is an optional activity aimed at providing additional clinical experience to those who have completed the course.
The programme is aimed to provide doctors with the knowledge, skills and attitudes to become effective Family Physicians. It is relevant to doctors of all backgrounds and experience from early career doctors to those established in other specialities.
The programme provides a high quality Masters level qualification in Family Medicine and builds on the skills already gained by the student in their post graduate clinical training. It is not a recognised vocational training course and cannot be used for direct entry to clinical practice as a Family Physician.
The pharmaceutical and life sciences industries are investing in stem cells, either in direct applications where the stem cells themselves would be used for therapy or indirectly, where stem cell derived tissues will be used for drug screening and toxicity testing.
This programme is intended to meet current and future needs of the pharmaceutical industry and health care providers by providing a cadre of well-trained scientists capable of fulfilling managerial, administrative, research and technical roles within the developing commercial regenerative medicine sector.
Our programme covers key theoretical and practical aspects of the growth and maintenance of pluripotent stem cell lines, the directed differentiation of these cells into defined tissue phenotypes, and the maintenance of the differentiated state under conditions suitable for drug testing/screening programs.
Essential elements of good practice will also be included, such as quality assurance and the regulatory framework that surrounds the derivation, storage and use of human cells.
Our teaching is multidisciplinary, with contributions from the fields of medicine, biology, chemistry and bioinformatics.
The programme contains both taught and independent project components.
Compulsory courses
Industrial placement
There will be an industrial placement of three months, situated within a life sciences company specialising in aspects of regenerative medicine. Financial assistance may be available to cover travel expenses to the location of the industrial placement.
Graduates will be equipped for a variety of roles within the developing commercial regenerative medicine sector.
The aim of the Eu2P Master in Pharmacovigilance and Pharmacoepidemiology is to respond to the growing need for well-trained professionals in pharmacovigilance and pharmacoepidemiology highlighted by industry, regulatory and academic bodies. There is a particular need for skilled people, trained in medicine risk-benefit assessment, risk management plan elaboration, risk minimization and risk communication.
Eu2P-trained professionals are qualified for new job profiles such as project managers, pharmacoepidemiological coordinators, risk-benefit analysts and people able to interact with statisticians and clinicians. Eu2P is designed for: non-specialists, graduate and postgraduate students in Health and Life Sciences, healthcare professionals, companies, regulatory agencies and academic institutions.
The Eu2P Master offers six high level curricula track specializations to meet specific professional needs in: benefit assessment of medicine, medicine risk identification and quantification, medicine benefit-risk assessment, medicine and public health, medicine risk communication along with an “A la carte” track.
Year 1: 60 ECTS credits
Validation of mandatory basis modules for Pharmacovigilance and Pharmacoepidemiology (24 ECTS).
Completion of a tutored project (6 ECTS).
Validation of a research project (30 ECTS).
Year 2: 60 ECTS credits
Validation of theoretical content (ten modules, 30 ECTS):
Six mandatory theoretical modules.
Validation of a research project (30 ECTS).
Opportunities that involve collecting, monitoring, researching, assessing and evaluating information from healthcare providers and patients on the adverse effects of medications to ensure that drugs on the market are safe for patients and to identify new hazards associated with the medication.
Students are generally in either full or part-time employment and are likely to have a range of responsibilities, mostly in pharmacovigilance and medical information, monitoring safety data in either pre- or post-marketing studies or from spontaneous reports. Pharmacovigilance is an expanding area, primarily due to an increase in regulation and product withdraws based on safety concerns.
Following registration to Eu2P, students are invited to join the Alumni group via which they regularly receive job offers from all over the world.
Our Global Health & Social Justice course is a unique study pathway that combines the study of social science and anthropology with philosophy. Covering topics such as inequalities in preventable mortality, disease, disability and access to medical care across countries, it will help you to develop advanced skills in the critical analysis and possible solutions for global health inequalities.
The Global Health & Social Justice course will provide you with a demanding study pathway covering dynamic topics within global health. You will explore major issues and debates, as well as develop the capacity for critically assessing the scientific research and practices aiming to address global health inequalities. You with also cover the fundamental aspects relating to philosophical debates about social justice and health equity.
The course offers you flexibility with the choice to study either full or part-time. You will explore a range of required modules such as Designing Quantitative and Qualitative Research, Foundations in Global Health and Social Medicine, Critical Global Health and also Global Health Ethics, plus a range of further required and optional modules depending on your choice of pathways.
The MSc in Global Health & Social Justice is ideal for anyone wishing to develop a rigorous understanding of the dynamic field of global health; it is suitable for health professionals, policy makers, philanthropists, those who work in governmental and non-governmental organizations, and potential PhD students and academics.
It provides access to the major issues and debates in global health, develops capacity for critically assessing the scientific research and practices aiming to address global health inequalities. It also grounds students in the philosophical debates about social justice and health equity.
Teaching
We will teach you through a combination of lectures and seminars, and you will typically have 15 hours of this per 15-credit module over a 10 week term. We also expect you to undertake 135 hours of independent study for each module. Typically, one credit equates to 10 hours of work.
Assessment
The department assesses students on a combination of essays, written examinations, oral presentations and the dissertation. The nature of assessment varies by module.
Graduates from this course have gone on to the following destintations:
