Online MSc Dementia | University of Hull Online

Course overview

Every 3 seconds, someone in the world develops dementia. With diagnoses worldwide soaring above 55 million, it affects virtually everyone in some capacity. On our course, which is developed jointly with end-of-life experts, you’ll gain an in-depth understanding of how this disease affects both sufferers and their families. This knowledge will empower you to drive positive change in all areas – from reframing public perception and awareness to challenging current approaches to patient care.

Why choose this course?

Practical industry insights

This course is based on expert input from palliative care specialists at Dove House Hospice, who have first-hand experience with patients.

New perspectives

The knowledge you gain will challenge your own perceptions of dementia and enable you to reshape the provision of care.

Networking opportunities

By meeting like-minded people at our face-to-face events, you can broaden your knowledge of the subject while sharing potentially transformative ideas.

On the MSc, you will:

Study modules that explore understandings of dementia, define what it means to ‘live well’ with the disease, and examine how wider social systems impact patient care.
Use a multi-disciplinary approach to familiarise yourself with discourse on dementia, and the experience of living with it.
Develop the holistic knowledge required to formulate people-centric, life-enhancing care plans for patients and their families.
Learn how to align with providers in wider social systems and ensure that their approaches support the provision of care.
Explore how to promote the philosophy of ‘living well’, and advocate for dementia patient rights with an informed perspective.

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Hello. I'm Emma. And I'm Liz. We're the Programme Directors for the MSC in Dementia. And we've sat down together today to tell you a little bit more about the programme. We're really proud aren't we? With the programme that created and really excited to tell people a bit more about it.

So together we've designed this MSc programme to give you critical understanding of dementia and to give you insight into the lived experience of people with dementia.

The course we hope will help you challenge contemporary thinking about dementia and give you new ways of thinking about how you can apply your new learning to working in the field of dementia care. The course is delivered a hundred percent online, which is great because it gives you the flexibility to fit your studies around your work and personal commitment which is great if you're a busy health and social care professional, but you also get the teaching excellence and career enhancing opportunities from the University of Hull.

If you're a healthcare or social work professional, perhaps you work in physiotherapy, occupational therapy or nursing too, then we think this course will enable you to develop as we've said new ways of thinking about dementia.

We're also keen for this course to appeal to people who volunteer with people with dementia at the moment, but who are also keen to make dementia care their future career.

The range of professionals that we're hoping will be attracted to the course we think will make this course a really multidisciplinary learning environment. So we also hope that this course will appeal to end of life care and specialist palliative care workers who have an interest in dementia, perhaps people that work in hospices.

We know that dementia is the leading cause of death in the developed world and so we really need to enhance our skills in delivering good quality end of life care for people with dementia and their families.

And so we've designed a module called Dying Well with Dementia along with end of life care specialists to really look at this area.

So one of the things we've thought really hard about in designing the course is assignments, isn't it? And I know it's something that health and social care professionals can worry a bit about coming back to education and dreaded essays and assignments and things. Absolutely. So what we've done is create assignments that are not standard essays.

So for example, we've asked students to write an online blog -- Mhmm. -- which perhaps thinks about resources for people with dementia. And we've even asked people to write their own care plan for when they get dementia. So this is is is creative ways of thinking about assessment.

I guess one of the standard things that we have our students to do those to write the dissertation. Mhmm. But our thinking how I think was that we felt it would offer students an opportunity to think differently about dementia. To bring new ways of thinking about dementia into their work or even to think about the applied context as well and how what they do in the workplace, then translates into into what they write.

Really thinking about how that big piece of work in the dissertation can change the way we think about dementia, but change it but the way we work in dementia as well. And it might give them some ideas for going forwards and dementia research themselves. Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. Dementia is our greatest public health challenge and we need strong and innovative leaders in this field and I think that this programme will help people to develop services and shape the future of dementia care. Absolutely. I mean, the course is designed to help students become independent thinkers. Think about new ways of conceptualizing dementia.

And I guess what we've written into this programme is a whole values based foundation, which will help students build on the current skills and the current knowledge. And what what sits right at the heart of what we've done is effectively the human rights of people with dementia. That's what we're keen to to stress in the program and that's what we want students to think about.

Human rights and their own values and how they impact on their on their future practice.

I think one of the other things about this course is the leadership potential it's gonna give to people and helping them to think about how we enhance service, how we improve care for people with dementia, but also for their families. Yeah.

With the University of Hull Online, you don't only get the excellence in teaching and learning that our university is renowned for. You also get to schedule your studies around your own time. And through our dedicated learning platform, you'll also have access to a whole range of support and online activities that will be able to complement your learning.