From ethics to digitalisation in healthcare: From the coming semester, the university will be offering a Master's degree programme in Health Services Research. Head of degree programme Lena Ansmann explains in an interview why this degree programme is important and what it aims to teach.
The Master's degree programme in Health Services Research will start for the first time next winter semester. What do you want to achieve with the new programme?
The degree programme deals with a wide range of issues relating to healthcare. For example, our graduates should contribute to improving the care of patients and certain population groups, such as older people or people with social disadvantages, in the future. The degree programme is also research-oriented and interdisciplinary. We use a wide range of scientific methods - from interviews with those affected to health economic analyses. This includes methods of qualitative and quantitative research as well as evidence synthesis. This means that our students learn to systematically identify existing studies on the same issue, to critically evaluate their quality and to summarise their results. This is important for clinicians or decision-makers, for example, who need a systematically organised overview of the diverse literature.
What is special about the degree programme?
Health services research is a young discipline. And our Department is a unique institution in Germany with nine departments and around 80 employees. Our students benefit from the broad methodological and substantive expertise of the research focus at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences, which was only founded in 2012. The courses on offer also cover ethical issues, digitalisation in the healthcare sector, the organisation of healthcare and topics relating to patient centricity and patient safety, for example. There has never been a degree programme of this kind in the north-west before.
What can students expect?
As we are offering the degree programme for the first time, students can play a greater role in shaping it. We offer 25 places on the programme, which means that we can provide our students with intensive, close personal contact. Those who study with us can also set individual specialisations and deepen these, for example, in the professional internship, the research project or the Master's thesis. We also enable students to gain their first experience of congresses as part of an excursion.
Who can apply for the degree programme?
Basically anyone who has a Bachelor's degree in a suitable degree programme, for example in the health or social sciences. An important prerequisite is that those interested have already acquired a wide range of skills in research methods during their Bachelor's degree programme.
And what happens after graduation?
Graduates can go into research at universities and non-university institutions. However, they can also consider scientific activities in other areas, for example in practice facilities, such as rehabilitation centres or Public Health Departments, or with decision-makers in the healthcare sector, such as the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, ministries or scientific institutes of health insurance companies.
Interview: Constanze Böttcher
