Decision Making for Health Settings Short Course 

Course Overview 

Course fee £900

Designed for health and care professionals, this course enhances decision-making in complex clinical environments.

This module is designed for health and care professionals who want to deepen their understanding of decision-making in clinical practice. It offers learners the chance to critically analyse and appraise theories and frameworks related to clinical decision-making and apply these to their current practise.

By engaging in critical reflection throughout the module, learners will be able to develop their decision-making skills and evaluate their own processes when dealing with rapidly changing situations, uncertainty, and risk.

Topics covered will include:

• Decision-making theories
• Pattern recognition
• Information processing
• Intrinsic and extrinsic factors affecting decision making
• Risk assessment and management
• Managing uncertainty
• Legal, professional and ethical issues in decision making
• Bayesian inference, statistical probability and testing
• Human and system factors in decision making; shared decision making
• Clinical supervision.

This module is taught at Level 7 (postgraduate) level which requires students to engage as independent, critical thinkers. It carries 15 academic credits, which represents a total of 150 hours of student effort. In addition to the taught sessions, the learners will be required to undertake directed and self-directed study, including reading, research and work-based project work. Students will need to complete and pass the assessment task to be awarded the Level 7 credits.

Course assessment:

A 3000-word written assignment in which the student provides a critical reflection on their professional decision making in practice.

The course assessment must be completed, and passed, to be awarded 15 L7 (MSc) academic credits.

Course Schedule
Application deadline: Friday 15th August 2025	-Submit formal application for Professional Practice short course here -Provide degree evidence (+ proof of name change if applicable) -Submit Module Registration Form here
Online enrolment	Complete online enrolment prior to course start to access course resources
Day 1 Wednesday 1st October 2025	Teaching In Person (6 hours)
Day 2 Friday 17th October 2025	Teaching In Person (6 hours)
Day 3 Friday 31st October 2025	Teaching In Person (6 hours)
Day 4 Friday 14th November 2025	Teaching In Person (6 hours)
Day 4.5 Friday 21 November 2025	Asynchronous lecture and a group tutorial session.
Assessment Friday 5th December 2025	Assessment Submit online

Entry Requirements

Current professional registration (eg. HCPC, NMC or GPhC) and working in a relevant health or social care setting. 

Ability to study at level 7 (ideally educated to degree level or equivalent professional experience).  

If English is not first language: IELTS 7.0 overall, including a minimum of 6.5 in each of the components. 

This course can be taken as a stand-alone module or be stacked together with other modules for the award of a PGCert Professional Practice (a total of 60 credits required) or a PG Diploma Professional Practice (120 credits required).  The addition of an Extended Independent Project (60 credits) would enable the learner to obtain an MSc in Professional Practice.

Expressions of interest or queries: Email HWBShortCourses@winchester.ac.uk