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Students sitting in the sunshine outside the Big Data Institute building.

Population Health

We offer population health courses to Oxford medical students and support the Medical School in meeting the national requirement to train medical professionals in population health.

In a typical academic year we teach over 400 medical students and aim to provide an understanding of the basis for the population health approach (sociology, social determinants of health), its methods (epidemiology, statistics, health economics, guideline and policy making) and clinically relevant approaches to prevention (health promotion, screening and health protection).

During clinical training we offer a 6 week clinical speciality course in public health within the community rotation and support integrated population health teaching in other medical specialities. We also support 10 to 15 students who choose to focus on population health in self-selected modules in their final year of training.

To find out about becoming involved in population health teaching at NDPH, please contact the Clinical Course Administrator. We have access to a range of training and degree programmes for teachers who wish to further develop their skills. Our teaching includes large lectures, small groups, tutorials and individual supervision and is suitable to different levels of prior teaching experience.

These pdfs provide further details of preclinical coursesclinical courses and teaching skills courses

 

MEDICAL ETHICS AND LAW

The Ethox Centre in the Nuffield Department of Population Health offers training in medical ethics and law to medical students on both undergraduate and graduate-entry courses.

Undergraduate study

For students on the standard undergraduate medical school course, teaching in ethics and law is offered during the clinical training years (years 4-6).

In year 4 students examine core topics through which they acquire legal and ethical reasoning skills relevant to their future roles as clinicians. These topics include:

  • Introduction to medical law
  • Medical negligence
  • Confidentiality
  • Consent to medical treatment
  • Decision-making and care at the end of life
  • Ethics in clinical genetics and genomics
  • Ethical and regulatory aspects of medical research involving human participants.

In years 5 and 6 ethics and law teaching is woven into the different clinical rotations. In these sessions students gain knowledge of ethical and legal issues in specialised areas of medical practice (including psychiatry, obstetrics and gynaecology, population health, and infectious diseases). They are also introduced to peer learning in ethics and law, ensuring that they are equipped to lead and facilitate their own discussions with colleagues in clinical practice settings.

A 4-week special study module in medical ethics in year 4 offers students an opportunity to explore, in more depth, a particular issue in medical ethics that interests them.

Graduate study

For students on the graduate entry medical school course, teaching in ethics and law is offered in year 1 with further teaching provided in years 3 and 4 when the students join the last two years of the standard course. The seminars in year 1 focus on the core topics outlined above, and students engage in self-directed learning and extended class discussions with medical ethicists, medical lawyers, and clinicians working in a variety of specialities.

The textbook for these courses is Medical Ethics and Law: the Core Curriculum (2nd Edition), Hope, T, Savulescu, J. and Hendrick, J. (2007) Edinburgh: Churchill-Livingstone.

To find out more about the medical ethics and law teaching at NDPH, or if you are a health care practitioner interested in becoming involved in the teaching, please contact Dr Mehrunisha Suleman

If you have any questions please email the Clinical Course Administrator or phone 01865 617803.