MSc in Surgical Science and Practice
Gain the essential non-clinical skills for a successful clinical career
Student experience
'A fantastic intersection of academia, industry, and clinical work.' Kashif Majeed, MD |
'The project I chose for my dissertation allowed me to take an active role in improvement work at my hospital. Since its completion in the year after finishing my residency training, I was promoted from Clinical Associate to Lecturer, and to Assistant Professor shortly thereafter.' Laila Nasser, MD, MSc, FRCPC |
What will you learn?
The course comprises six taught modules and a supervised dissertation.
Taught modules
MSc students are required to take each of the six modules below. Details of the topics covered in each of the six taught modules can be found in the individual module descriptions:
While each module its own clear focus, students will also find that capabilities in one area reinforce and amplify their effectiveness in other areas. For example, having taken the Quality Improvement Science and Systems Analysis module, students are often curious about the boundary between ‘improvement’ and ‘innovation’. Taking the Healthcare Innovation and Technology module, students explore methods and approaches used for innovation that have both similarities and differences when compared to methods and approaches for improvement.
Similarly, effective leadership and influencing skills, a focus of the Leadership and Management in Healthcare module, are an enabler for the clinician as educator, innovator and improver of services.
This ability to make connections across mutually reinforcing domains, building an increasingly sophisticated set of capabilities, is a unique feature of the course. Applicants often point to the breadth of topics covered and the way they are integrated into a single Masters as a decisive factor in choosing this course, preferring this to taking separate courses not designed to fit together coherently.
Learning outcomes
Students completing the taught modules will have developed the skills and knowledge to:
- Apply the principles of human factors and ergonomics to understand error in healthcare and design practices that maximise safety and reliability
- Critically appraise clinical evidence and assess its validity and relevance to your practice, including assessing the case for changing diagnostic and therapeutic protocols
- Analyse and improve clinical care pathways and settings of care using quality improvement science and systems analysis methods
- Understand how to develop and implement innovations in healthcare including creating business plans and business cases for your own area of practice
- Develop further as a mentor and educator, including being an effective and inspiring supervisor, setting up and running courses, designing curricula and evaluating educational provision
- Understand principles of leading a team, practices that foster a culture of effective teamwork, and skills for influencing other departments and organisational priorities
- Understand the organisational dynamics in healthcare, including financial flows and management systems, and what this means for exerting influence as a clinician.
Supervised dissertation
While the taught modules emphasise breadth, enabling students to develop as well-rounded clinician leaders, the dissertation component of the Master's is your opportunity to develop depth of expertise in an area of special interest, aligned with your career aspirations.
One of the University of Oxford’s profound strengths is inter-disciplinary learning and research. Rather than sharp lines drawn between disciplines, Oxford students and researchers relish crossing boundaries. They use the light shone by one discipline’s way of understanding the world to understand unexpected and unexplored features of another domain of knowledge. This is supported by the College system. Scholars and researchers from different disciplines share meals, common rooms and social activities. Many unexpected insights and fruitful collaborations have their origins in serendipitous encounters and friendships enabled by this unique element of academic life at Oxford.
Accordingly, our students are encouraged to consider the methods employed by, for example, sociologists, political scientists, innovators or educational theorists, as well as classical evidence-based medicine approaches. Cross-disciplinary methodologies can yield new insights into healthcare problems, be they perennial challenges (tackling waits and delays; reducing errors and waste to ‘get it right first time’) or new problems and opportunities introduced by societal change and technical advances.
Freedom to define the topic you want to research
You are free to define the research topic that is most motivating and relevant for you. The only requirement is that it relate to the MSc curriculum. In some cases the topic relates to a single module, as in researching a clinical innovation or pursuing a quality improvement initiative. In other cases the topic bridges several modules. Examples of recent topics chosen by students for their research project can be found below.
Examples of recent dissertation titles:
- The timing of intervention for major complications after oesophagogastric cancer surgery and length of hospital stay: a single centre retrospective cohort study
- Dental wrong site surgery: analysis, intervention and prevention
- Improving the outpatient clinic service for shoulder and elbow patients
- What Women Want: a qualitative analysis of women's motivation to pursue surgical careers
- Identifying the training needs and resource requirements for a clinical research capacity building course in a low income setting
- Cardiothoracic Surgery in the Military Health System: maintaining critical wartime capability and surgeon readiness
- Exploring the role of collaborative case conferences in aortic treatment pathways: a quality
- improvement initiative
- Establishing a 3D printing laboratory in low-resource healthcare setting: a feasibility study
- Reducing cardiac surgery day of surgery cancellations using quality improvement and human factors approaches
- Clinical Frailty in Urology in the emergency setting.
- The potential for AI to assist interpretation of multimodal imaging
Dissertation supervisors
Supervisors are often drawn from our panel of course faculty, some fifty academics and practitioners. Students may develop their research proposal in discussion with a particular member of our course faculty, who then goes on to act as supervisor.
Equally the collaborative culture of the University of Oxford means that if your research question or methodology can be better supported by a supervisor from the wider university, with a relevant area of specialisation, this can often be arranged.
Some recent supervisors have been:
| Consultant Anaesthetist at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford Director of the University of Oxford Simulation Centre Doctoral research on situational awareness in the operating theatre Module lead for Human Factors, Communication and Teamwork | |
| Consultant in Plastic Surgery and Skin Cancer Lead, Buckinghamshire Healthcare Trust Associate Medical Director for Research and Innovation Lead for the Royal College of Surgeons of England's Future of Surgery Innovation Hub Inventor of Tournistrip, single use tourniquet with global sales in excess of 75 million units | |
Associate Professor, Health Management, Manchester Business School Associate Editor Health Services Management Research Author Operations Management for Healthcare Faculty on Quality Improvement Science and Systems Analysis module | |
Consultant Physician and Clinical Lead for Dementia/Delirium Professor of Medicine and Old Age Neuroscience Editorial board member of Stroke, International Journal of Stroke, Neurology, and Cerebrovascular Disease journals | |
Retired Ear, Nose and Throat Surgeon Doctoral research on power and decision-making in healthcare organisations Former module lead for Leadership and Management in Healthcare Faculty on Oxford’s Medical Education MSc | |
Consultant paediatric surgeon at the Children’s Hospital, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford Professor of Global Paediatric Surgery Leader of the Oxford University Global Surgery Group |
Application deadlines
12:00 midday UK time on:
| Friday 15 November 2024 |
| Applications more likely to receive earlier decisions |
| Wednesday 29 January 2025 |
| Latest deadline for most Oxford scholarships |
| Tuesday 4 March 2025 |
| Applications may remain open after this deadline if places are still available - see below |
| A later deadline under 'Admission status' |
| If places are still available, applications may be accepted after 4 March. The Admission status (above) will provide notice of any later deadline. |
If you have questions, please email ssp@nds.ox.ac.uk.
Interested in similar courses?
Have a look at our PGCert in Patient Safety and Quality Improvement or any of our related short courses.