About the course

The Masters programme is taken over one year and is common to both of School of Pharmacy’s postgraduate programmes, i.e. Clinical Pharmacy Practice and Advanced Practice. It is structured to be suitable for pharmacists from all areas of professional practice and is flexible to your own learning needs and the needs of your employer.

The Masters year is categorised by the University as a Professional MSc that is grounded in an individual’s professional practice and the programme structure encompasses an emphasis on the researching professional as a reflective practitioner. It will enable you to focus on a personal area of interest within your practice so that you can develop a comprehensive understanding and critical awareness of this area at an advanced level. It will enable you to apply your learning to develop your professional practice/services through scholarship and research whilst at the same time enabling you to achieve the standards for a postgraduate Masters degree.

Entry to the Masters year requires satisfactory completion of a postgraduate Diploma award that is associated the relevant Keele programmes, or an ‘equivalent’ postgraduate Diploma award from another university. Candidates who wish to gain direct entry after having completed a Diploma at another university will have to provide full details of the syllabus covered/assessment strategy for consideration with their application to Keele. Diplomas awarded more than 5 years ago can be considered for entry to the Professional MSc year, provided the diploma is still considered current - all decisions on the relevance of the diploma to the MSc programme are at the programme manager’s discretion.

The title of the final MSc award will depend on the entry route – students entering with a Keele Diploma in Clinical Pharmacy Practice (or previous equivalent) or with the relevant postgraduate diploma from another university, will be graduate with an MSc in Clinical Pharmacy Practice.

Those entering with a Diploma in Advanced Practice (or previous equivalent) will graduate with an MSc in Advanced Practice.

You may be able to obtain funding towards our Professional MSc programme. Two current funding streams that we are aware of are:

NPA Health Education Foundation Bursary for Community Pharmacists http://www.npa.co.uk/About-the-NPA/Who-we-are/Health-Education-Foundation/

Pharmacy Research UK awards http://www.pharmacyresearchuk.org/pharmacy-research-funding/personal-awards-2/‘

Aims of the course

The Masters year is structured to take into account a number of factors affecting education and professional role development for pharmacists to embody an emphasis on the researching professional as a reflective practitioner.

It is categorised by the University as a Professional MSc that is grounded in an individual’s professional practice.

It will enable you to focus on an area of interest to you so that you can develop a comprehensive understanding and critical awareness of this at an advanced level and apply your learning to develop your professional practice/services through scholarship, research and enquiry that will, in parallel, enable you to achieve the standards for a Masters degree.

Entry Requirements

Entry requirements

The Masters programme is taken over one year and is common to both of School of Pharmacy’s postgraduate programmes, i.e. Clinical Pharmacy Practice and Advanced Practice. It is structured to be suitable for pharmacists from all areas of professional practice and is flexible to your own learning needs and the needs of your employer.

Entry to the Masters year requires satisfactory completion of a postgraduate Diploma award that is associated with one of the relevant Keele programmes, or an ‘equivalent’ postgraduate Diploma award from another university. Candidates who wish to gain direct entry after having completed a Diploma at another university will have to provide full details of the syllabus covered/assessment strategy for consideration with their application to Keele. Decisions on the equivalence of other diplomas to allow entry to the Keele Professional MSc are at the Programme Manager’s discretion.

English language proficiency requirement

If English is not your first language, you must either:

Hold a degree from a school where English was the language of instruction
OR
Take the IELTS (average of 7.0 with a minimum of 6.5 in all categories)

Please note that IETLS exams must be no more than two years old at the start of the programme for which you have applied.

Course content

The programme is designed around three compulsory modules:

• Introduction to Research Methods
• Research in Practice
• Researching Professional Practice

The delivery media used, outline content and activities for each module are described in the postgraduate module section of the website. You will also attend an Induction Session at the beginning of the programme. This will be held ‘virtually’ so there is no requirement to attend Keele. 

Teaching and assessment

The Professional MSc is designed principally for distance-learning. We provide mainly online distance-learning materials so that you can study where and when it is most convenient for you.

The Professional MSc is fully supported by a team of experienced, friendly, and approachable academic, administrative and technical staff based at Keele. The Programme is also supported by our network of experienced, practising tutors. You’re not on your own! And, don’t forget the network of other pharmacists on the programme whom you can contact. You will require the equivalent of 1-2 days (approximately 10-15 hours) each week to complete your programme. Remember that the online nature of our programme materials, and the fact the MSc focuses on your professional practice, means that you can integrate study and work.

You will be assigned a tutor at the beginning of the programme who will support you throughout the programme. You will meet with your tutor on a regular basis either on the telephone, virtually or face to face as agreed between you and your tutor.

Assessment is entirely by coursework. For the Introduction to Research Methods, you will undertake an evaluation of two research methods that you might use in your research, develop your research proposal in Research into Practice and write a dissertation on your  research project for Researching Professional Practice that will assess ‘thinking’ and practical skills, and your ability to plan, conduct and report on an investigation. All the modules also assess your ability to critically appraise the literature and relate published theory to everyday practice.

Each method of assessment is supported by clear criteria for marking; these are explained in the relevant Programme Handbooks. The minimum pass mark is 50%. The summative assessment is supported by a variety of formative assessment activities that include online discussions and formative feedback on elements of the reflective portfolio.

Additional costs

For all programmes you will need regular access to a computer, email and the internet. Apart from additional costs for text books, inter-library loans and potential overdue library fines we do not anticipate any additional costs for our postgraduate programmes.