University of Warwick Explains the MSc Nursing Leadership & Advanced Practice Pathway

University of Warwick has published a full guide to the MSc Nursing Leadership & Advanced Practice for registered nurses who are moving into charge, quality, education or advanced-practice roles and cannot leave their service to study.

The programme covers advanced clinical leadership, evidence-based practice and critical appraisal, patient safety and risk governance, health systems and interprofessional care, quality improvement methods drawn from the IHI and Lean traditions, advanced pathophysiology and clinical reasoning, workforce development and mentorship, digital health and informatics, and the ethics, law and professional accountability that senior nursing roles carry.

The applied work is done where the nurse already works. A quality-improvement project runs in the student's own ward or clinic, supervised by a local clinical supervisor and a University of Warwick academic supervisor. "A leadership project that only makes sense in another country's health service is useless," the programme leader said. "We want a rota change, a safety intervention or a handover redesign that the student's own service could adopt."