This core module is integral to your Postgraduate Certificate programme. You begin the module by taking part in activities that help you become more self-aware of your strengths, areas for improvement, and the skills and knowledge needed for your personal and professional growth. This helps you plan a course of study that aligns with your personal and professional development needs. Throughout the programme, you will receive support from a learning mentor.

After designing and negotiating your programme, this module will support you throughout your learning journey until its completion. The main purpose of the module is to help you learn about learning and develop this important lifelong and work-based skill. This will give you the confidence to critically evaluate and challenge ideas, advocate for your own opinions, and communicate complex ideas to different audiences.

The module covers the following topics:

• History and development of Quality Improvement Science
• Models and techniques for Quality Improvement and Improvement Science
• Policy and context of Quality Improvement in healthcare
• Organisational readiness for Quality Improvement

By the end of the course, you will have developed

• A critical understanding of the role of improvement science in a healthcare context
• Knowledge and understanding of key models related to Quality and Improvement Science
• An understanding of improvement practices in relation to your own organisational role and context.

The project syllabus will be largely determined by the focus and nature of your project and will be agreed between you and your mentor-facilitator. You will be guided, supported and encouraged to take a proactive role in designing your own learning. It is likely this learning will be located in the following areas:

• Knowledge creation - identifying potential enquiry approaches suitable for work-based projects that deliver impact
• Developing critical cognitive skills for questioning and challenging existing organisational ideas and practices
• Developing clarity and consistency in communicating with a range of organisational and academic audiences.
• Exploring social and ethical challenges in changing organisational contexts

Effective collaboration and successful teamwork are key features of successful organisations. This course will develop your critical understanding of the features of "high-performing teams" and your skills working as a team leader or member.

You will explore key concepts, models and theories of team roles and dynamics and relate these to your own experience. You will evaluate frameworks for assessing and developing team performance and consider their usefulness and applicability to your own practice.

We will explore with you the answers to some key questions:

• What is the impact of leadership on the performance and development of teams?
• What leadership skills and strategies are effective?
• What is 'collective leadership'?
• What are the specific challenges of working with inter-agency and inter-professional teams?

You will evaluate ideas, relate them to your situation and develop practical strategies you can adopt at work.

Creative thinking is the ability to imagine or invent something new and is a powerful skill in the work context spanning the spectrum of 'brilliant ideas' to 'better ways of doing things'. It can be closely linked to problem-solving. This module will help you develop your abilities and support you to develop a creative, innovative culture in your team.

You will examine concepts and models used to stimulate creative thinking and frameworks for problem-solving and assess their applicability and usefulness to your work. For example, you might look at the work of experts such as Edward de Bono and evaluate ideas such as ‘left and right brain thinking’, ‘six thinking hats’ and a ‘solution focus rather than a problem focus’.

This module will cover topics including:

• Leadership in times of change
• Transitional to transformational leadership
• Appreciative leadership
• Stakeholder analysis
• Supporting staff in embracing change
• Capacity building to cope with uncertainty
• Achieving sustainable change
• Dealing with resistance to change
• Emotional Intelligence - self and social awareness
• Influencing skills

You will develop your understanding of various approaches to leading others through times of change. You will develop your ability to understand how to engage and influence others and how to take into account different individual’s responses to change. This learning will enhance your capacity to lead and manage people through change.

The topics covered in this module include:

• What is leadership? What is management?
• Leadership and management: current debates and issues in relation to the challenges of your own role
• Social and ethical challenges for management and leadership in changing organisational contexts; managing with integrity
• Organisation culture, values, power – impact on expectations and behaviours of leadership and management
• Understanding your own leadership style, behaviours, habits
• Evaluating your own strengths and development needs in the context of management and leadership
• Developing authentic leadership effectiveness – aligning your approach to fit with current and future organisational needs

This module will help you to understand different perceptions of effective leadership and management and examine the effectiveness of leadership and management in the context of your own organisation. You will be able to devise a strategy for your own personal leadership development to help you address the current challenges of your role.