The aim of this MSc course is to allow participants further their career progression in musculoskeletal and sports and exercise medicine by enhancing basic background knowledge in anatomy, exercise physiology, sports and exercise science, in addition to high quality practical and critical thinking skills in musculoskeletal assessment, rehabilitation, and exercise testing and training prescription. Students will achieve this through a tiered process starting in Semester 1 with two basic science modules in Anatomy and Exercise Physiology; and a Research Methods module. In anatomy students develop a thorough knowledge of musculoskeletal and neuroanatomy through instructor lead dissection based practical classes examining joints and the organisation of the central and peripheral nervous systems. In the exercise physiology module, learning focuses on the key systems for sports and physical activity; energy systems, muscle physiology, cardiovascular and respiratory systems; and whole body hormonal and homeostatic responses to physical activity and exercise.
In the second semester the focus shifts to clinical aspects of sports and exercise medicine, such as musculoskeletal assessment skills, rehabilitation protocols; aspects of team and individual athlete care within different sports; and an exercise science module also contains new components on physical activity and population health. Critical thinking skills are developed in instructor lead clinical case scenario-based teaching with real patients and student led seminars reviewing the current literature to demonstrate the scope of problems encountered in day to day care of athletes and teams, and the physically active of all ages and gender.
As this course will be evidence-based, students will become critical consumers of the literature in the area of sports and exercise medicine. The research methods module in Semester 1 of each academic year will develop a students' ability to critically evaluate the latest research in order to keep up to date with the latest clinical advances in the discipline, enable the student to formulate a research question and give them all the skills necessary for high quality research project design, from statistical modelling, ethics application, power analysis, high quality data collection, data handling, statistical analysis; and finally scientific report writing worthy of submission as a journal article or critical review.
This MSc in Sports and Exercise Medicine can be completed in one or two academic years and will be made up of six taught modules (10 ECTS each) and a research project (30 ECTS). All course material is currently presented in lecture, workshops, seminars and practical class-based formats on campus. All students will be required to have a PC or Mac computer with large RAM capability and at least 4-6 GB storage capacity to allow use of large statistical data analysis packages such as SPSS; and for future developments of 'on-line' course delivery.