Master of Social and Health Care | Emergency Care Systems Development and Leadership

Studies for redesigning emergency care

Health care crises have made it clear that our emergency care systems and acute care pathways are experiencing a fundamental change in perspective. The need for major systemic change is evident, for both better person-centred care and the well-being of our health care professionals.

To ensure evidence-based, goal-directed development and meaningful change in emergency care systems, our objective is to educate future experts, leaders, and researchers with advanced competencies, diverse perspectives, and understanding of systems integrations, safety science, staff well-being, and person-centred emergency care systems at both practical and systems levels.

Work experience requirements

All applicants must, in addition to the required educational background, have at least two years (24 months) of relevant work experience gained after the completion of the bachelor's degree in order to meet the eligibility criteria. 

Work at the forefront of redesigning emergency care systems

We need to redesign emergency care as a system. It is necessary to integrate care pathways and existing services, develop new clinical advancements, reshape professional roles, and break old systemic and work cultural barriers within emergency care, such as roles between prehospital acute care, out-of-hospital community paramedicine, and emergency departments. 

The treatment of acute and critical patients is often volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environments must be safe, person-centred, and of the highest quality in the future while also addressing the increasing complexity of subacute patient profiles. Therefore, its continuous development requires long-term goals and rigorous processes to succeed and be effective.

We further need to make emergency care work manageable. By breaking silos and disciplinary boundaries and going beyond the scopes of familiar practices, we are sharing new knowledge and further understanding of the complexity, variety, and diversity of work in emergency care systems. 

We will explore how human-environment work can be further developed to be more sustainable and safer, utilizing, among others, translational simulations and design for psychologically safe work cultures. The goal is to make emergency care systems manageable and sustainable for all health care professionals.

What do the studies include?

The degree comprises 90 ECTS credits. The studies are taught entirely in English and are completed entirely online. The coursework includes assignments and lectures (online). Participation in online lectures is not mandatory but recommended. The degree contains the following three main modules:

• core competences (30 ECTS credits)
• elective complementary studies* (15 ECTS credits)
• research methods and master's thesis (15+30 ECTS credits).

*Elective complementary studies can be chosen from available master’s courses at LAB University of Applied Sciences or Arcada University of Applied Sciences, or from courses available at other institutions providing master’s level courses.

Learning outcomes

As a student in this programme, you will learn:

1. to analyse and evaluate the effectiveness and quality of emergency care interventions and systems and to develop systems thinking and person centredness in emergency care settings;
2. to support, develop, and enable sustainable human work in emergency care environments by evaluating the opportunities and challenges of future digital solutions for emergency care systems;
3. to evaluate and develop safety science-based interventions in emergency care to ensure high patient and occupational safety in a complex environment by evaluating opportunities and challenges in different emergency care systems.