Professional Development & Qualifications

For communicators in health and social care, professional development is usually a top personal issue.

To work at senior- or board-level in such a complex environment requires confidence and credibility. These flow in part from a structured framework of knowledge. Such knowledge is best encapsulated in a professional post graduate level qualification in health communications. It summarises, and signals, your status.

Our flagship, and a UK ‘first’, is designed to meet this need. It is the NHS Postgraduate Certificate in Health Communications (PgCert-HC).   Currently (March 2020) running are Cohorts 08 and 09.

You can register your interest in future cohorts. Further information about the wider NHS Improvement/NHS England communications development programme is available here.)

The PgCert-HC was commissioned by NHS Improvement and fully validated by the University in 2015.  It comprises four principal modules – in sequence, interpersonal, engagement (patient, staff & community),  leadership and external communications.

Subsequently (2015-19), we have completed seven typically 16-strong cohorts. Each was dedicated exclusively to senior managers in the UK NHS.  Each achieved a 100% success rate.

Professional development, of course, never concludes. In health communications, you can extend the NHS PgCert-HC via into one of two fully-accredited and complementary complete masters’ options:

• One at Buckinghamshire New University in professional practice;
• The second at Edinburgh’s Queen Margaret University in strategic communications.

In addition, the course holds full recognition from the UK’s Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR); accreditation versus the CIPR’s flagship professional diploma (now available as an option to past and current students); and the University/CHCR now holds CIPR Accredited Teaching Centre status.

Finally, we are researching a potential series of short courses in health communications (non-credit bearing).