Developing Critical Analytical Skills in Health and Social Care

Learning Outcomes 
The aims of the module are to encourage the development of critical appraisal and critical analytical skills, which should enable you to utilise service improvement tools and initiatives effectively in your own professional practice. 

On completion of this module, you should be able to:
1) Analyse and justify patient-led improvements to health and social care delivery within your own field of practice. 

2) Critically reflect on professional-patient relationships with a particular emphasis on ensuring integrated care, and improving the quality of the patient journey. 

3) Critically analyse the application of quality improvement theories and techniques to health and social care services in differing cultures and contexts. 

4) Critically analyse theories of leadership and apply them to health and social care settings. 

5) Evaluate and apply theories of change and contemporary organisation theory to inter-professional practice in health and social care. 
Critically analyse the shifting relationships between professional identity, managerial imperatives and social entrepreneurship in your own practice. 

Module Assessment 
The module is assessed by the completion of a single piece of coursework that is a 3500 word essay on the impact of leadership and change on the quality of healthcare provision. The coursework assesses all learning outcomes of this module. 

The Brief for the Final Assignment Coursework 
Reflecting on your experience in health and social care, either as a professional, volunteer, patient/service user or through any other involvement, identify an element of health or social care provision which could be improved. Perhaps there are failures in quality of patient care, simple issues that could be made better, or problems in the way that care is organised and delivered. 

Analyse the underlying causes of this shortfall in care, and what works or does not work effectively. Consider the whole system of care, making sure you examine from the perspectives of policy, community, management, staff team, and patient/service user. 

Propose some clear and achievable change that could improve the quality of care, clearly outlining how this would be implemented and how it could be evaluated. Make sure you address all of the learning outcomes in your writing. The essay must demonstrate your competence at critical evaluation, and in particular should critically analyse relevant theory, policy and practice, and include discussion of application/ implementation in a specific care environment.

This assignment gives you the opportunity to use the ideas and principles explored in the module and apply them to the reality of your experience. The intention is that you will be able to analyse the impact of leadership on the actual working of a service from the perspective of both the staff and service users involved. 

Do NOT attempt to modify or resubmit your work after the strict assignment deadline as doing so will result in your work being classified as late. The time recorded on the submission log is the official time of submission. 

If you are experiencing difficulties in uploading your work, please contact IT support for assistance. 
Extensions/deferrals for extenuating circumstances are subject to University regulations and may only be granted in advance of the submission date. Students should refer to their course handbook for further details.

Marking Your Coursework 
Marks and feedback will be available through grade mark via Moodle. The aim is to return your unratified marks after two weeks. 
The pass mark for the module is 40%. 

Marks are to be considered provisional until ratified by the appropriate assessment board and the external examiner.

Whilst we require students to read widely and to use reference materials, we expect each essay to be completely original with no plagiarism. All students should read the section on plagiarism in the course handbook before beginning an essay. 

Any passages within an essay that are not the student’s own words, but are taken from other sources, must be clearly distinguished with the use of quotation marks and appropriately referenced using the Coventry University Harvard System. 

All essays are thoroughly compared against an international database of works for plagiarism as part of the final marking. 

References must be cited in the text and listed in a Bibliography, using the Coventry University Harvard System (consult your course handbook). The ability to use references consistently and accurately, and identify the sources of your information, is an important aspect of work at Masters Level. You cannot pass if your essay is not properly referenced.