Master of Social and Health Care, Emergency Care Systems Development and Leadership, online studies, 90 op

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.

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.

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.

Combined expertise from two world-class institutions

This programme is offered in collaboration between LAB University of Applied Sciences and Arcada University of Applied Sciences. The programme combines the strengths and expertise within each institution, offering you as a student access to the latest knowledge in the field. It is also the first international master’s degree aimed at paramedics, nurses and other healthcare professionals working in emergency care settings, with a focus on systems-level development. The courses will all be held online. It is therefore not necessary to come to the Arcada or LAB campuses, or even to live in Finland in the first place.