MSc Sleep Medicine - Oxford Online Programme In Sleep Medicine

The physiology of sleep has always captivated me. After graduating from the Malta Medical School in 2011, I pursued a career in respiratory medicine with a special interest in sleep and ventilation. Following a 6-month fellowship in the UK at Leicester General and Glenfield Hospitals, in 2017, I sought to obtain formal training and accreditation in sleep medicine. The Online Sleep Medicine MSc programme offered by the University of Oxford was an ideal opportunity, which offered a vast and detailed curriculum based on pre-recorded lectures, delivered by experts in the fields and regular discussion groups with fruitful exchange of ideas.

Having just become a new mother, I had opted to start off with the PgDip in Sleep Medicine. On completion, I enrolled to the MSc Sleep Medicine course by conversion, which allowed me to focus more on the research modules and dissertation, with brilliant guidance and feedback from the tutors and dissertation supervisor throughout the course. The pinnacle of the course was a one-week residence programme in Oxford, giving me the opportunity to meet tutors and fellow students from all around the globe, as well as offering me a taste of Oxford University student life.

It was a true honour to have been awarded the Archibald Jackson Prize and Thomas Willis Prize for placing first by distinction among my highly qualified peers. The course has also laid foundations to pursue the European Sleep Research Society Expert Somnologist Examination.

The MSc in sleep medicine has been a perfect occasion to form part of a community of people with diverse backgrounds and experiences, pursuing a common goal, to understand and implement better the science of sleep medicine.

I am now a Consultant Psychiatrist in regional Victoria, Australia, but I enrolled in the inaugural cohort of the Oxford Online Programme in Sleep Medicine (OOPSM) in 2016, as a psychiatry trainee. I initially completed the PGDip over 2 years, before completing an additional year to gain the Masters. I did it this way due to simultaneously studying for the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists exams, and not wanting to bite off more than I could chew!

The OOPSM was indeed a challenge, but undeniably the most fun, stimulating and personally rewarding course I have ever done. Graduating from Oxford University is my proudest academic achievement and has opened several doors for me since then. At first I had ‘imposter syndrome’, in awe of my colleagues’ insights and knowledge, many of whom had been working in sleep for years. Yet the kindness, acceptance and curiosity of the teaching staff helped me build confidence quickly and it soon became apparent that the multidisciplinary, international cohort of students could draw on their own, individual areas of expertise to allow a community of like minds to develop.

I embarked on the programme largely due to my interest in the interplay between sleep and psychiatric illness, from the molecular level all the way up to the societal level. I wanted to develop fundamental knowledge of sleep before potentially embarking on a PhD that was to have a neuroscience focus. Of course, life sometimes intervenes, and whilst this remains the ultimate goal, studying for a PhD is on hold for now due to personal circumstances and the exigencies of the pandemic.

Yet despite not using the degree as I had originally intended (i.e. as a gateway to research), studying sleep medicine has transformed my clinical practice as a psychiatrist. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t draw on the knowledge gleaned from the programme - formulating cases through the prism of sleep, treating patients with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia, teaching medical students and junior doctors the fundamentals of sleep neuroscience, being just a few examples. As a liaison psychiatrist to the main hospital I will regularly evangelise about the importance of sleep for physical healing. And with psychiatric patients I have found that addressing sleep first has been a profoundly beneficial strategy, regardless of the acuity or aetiology of the presentation.

My name is Ray Huang from Vancouver, Canada. I am a Registered Respiratory Therapist and Clinical Team Lead at Coastal Sleep Apnea Clinic, where I work with physicians in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with sleep disordered breathing. After working in the field for a few years, I realized that some of our patients suffered from sleep issues that were not related to sleep disordered breathing. In hopes of expanding my knowledge, I searched and came across the online program at the University of Oxford and began my journey.

The two years of studies were challenging and rewarding at the same time. I worked full time in the day while taking the courses remotely at night. Financial stress was also present as scholarships were unavailable to international students. Thankfully, I was able to graduate with an MSc in Sleep Medicine in 2020.

Since graduating, I was able to apply what I learned into my clinical practice, specifically in educating and appropriately triaging patients that are experiencing non-breathing related sleep disorders. It has been my honour to learn from world renowned faculty members in the field at a prestige institution. I highly recommend this program to my colleagues and to all who are interested in refining their knowledge in sleep medicine.

I graduated from the first cohort of the Oxford Online Programme in Sleep Medicine (OOPSM) in 2018. I am a psychologist (clinical and developmental) in independent clinical practice. I also do research work in the Caribbean centering on violence against women and children. I am an advocate for good mental health on all fronts. I have always been acutely aware that sleep disturbances are inseparable from mental distress and before completing the Programme I was able to treat with these in a more ad hoc way, primarily with mental health as the gateway to treating sleep disturbances; not as an afterthought, but more specialised training was required.

Following from my OOPSM dissertation, along with my dissertation supervisor and colleagues, I wrote a chapter on sleep disturbances and intimate partner violence in a major violence handbook. It has been very well received. In people who have experienced or are experiencing interpersonal violence, sleep disturbances are universal. This has always been the case. Now though, treating sleep disturbances has become essential and routine in my trauma care. More recently, I have been involved with a Caribbean project dealing with the sexual abuse of children under the age of 5. I am now able to advocate for The Right to Sleep for victims of violence (emerging from my dissertation), and as a fundamental concept in any violence research I am involved in. I can now build sleep into the violence research agenda. Since the pandemic began, we have seen a surge in violence against women and children, globally. There is no time like the present to scale up mental health and sleep services for these increasingly vulnerable groups.