7015CPD Leadership, Service Improvement and Integrated Care Assessment Brief | CU

7015CPD Module Learning Outcomes

Make sure you address all of the learning outcomes in your writing, which are as follows:

• Analyse and justify patient- and service-user-led improvements to health and social care delivery within their field of practice by applying theories of change and project management to interprofessional practice in health and social care.
• Critically reflect on professional-client relationships with a particular emphasis on ensuring integrated care and improving the quality of the patient journey, drawing on quality improvement theories and techniques to health and social care services in differing cultures and contexts.
• Critically analyse theories of leadership and the shifting relationships between professional identity and managerial imperatives in their practice.

Presentation & Submission

The deadline is 18:00 UK time on Thursday, 17th April 2025. The submission link will be available approximately 2 weeks before the submission deadline.

All work must be submitted by the deadline given through the TURNITIN link on the AULA site for this Module. University regulations for late submission state that work submitted late will receive a mark of 0%.

Each piece of work uploaded will overwrite the previous, and the version remaining at the assignment deadline will be deemed as your final submission and marked accordingly.

DO NOT attempt to modify or resubmit your work after the strict assignment deadline, as doing so will result in your work being marked as late and will therefore receive a mark of 0%.

All work should be presented in Microsoft Word or a compatible format, one and a half or double-spaced, in a minimum font size of 12 and the surround (margins) should be at least 2.5cm (1 inch).

Please provide a title page, which must include:

• The module title and code
• The course you are studying
• The title of the assignment
• The date of submission
• The word count
• Your student number (Not Name)

You have a 10% margin on either side of this word count; therefore: 2250– 2750 words. A penalty of 10% of the mark for this work will be applied to submissions that exceed or are below the requirement by 10% or more. This coursework assesses all learning outcomes of this module.

Words contained within tables and figures in the main body of the assignment are NOT counted as part of the final word count, nor are references and appendices.

Guidelines

Choosing a subject

Reflecting on your experience in health and social care, either as a professional, volunteer, patient, service user or through any other involvement, identify an element of health or social care provision which could be improved. Perhaps there are failures in the quality of patient care; simple issues that could be improved, or problems in the way that care is organised and delivered.

Analyse the underlying causes of this issue and what works or does not work effectively. Consider the whole system of care, making sure you examine it from the perspectives of policy, community, management, staff team, and patient/service user.

Propose some clear and achievable changes that could improve the quality of care, clearly outlining how this would be implemented, and how it could be evaluated.

Your plan should be structured through clearly identified and logically organised sections, an example of which is given below:

Introduction & Background

In this section, you need to identify the characteristics of the issue and the precise focus and your intentions for the paper. The regional/national/international context and illustration of a patient journey may be relevant. The introduction should serve to identify for the reader the main features of the problem you have identified, to justify its relevance and importance.

Critical Analysis of the Problem

Descriptors for level 7/Masters include: a critical awareness of current problems and/or new insights and a systematic understanding of knowledge. Critical analysis is a systematic process of posing questions through examining the parts of a topic (analysis) and making judgements of the worth or merit of something through meaningful comparison. You are expected to demonstrate these skills in your writing and to underpin the academic argument you develop through reference to the sources. The literature base demonstrates the depth of reading completed in preparation for your work, as well as enabling a comprehensive knowledge.

In this section, you should demonstrate the application of concepts, models and theories which underpin Service Improvement activities to an analysis of the issue you have chosen.

Plan for Service Improvement

The goals of your plan should be clearly articulated and justified through reference to the evidence base. You may wish to add further sub-sections and sub-headings to this part of the report.

Evaluation

The conclusion to your work should focus on the strategies to be used in the evaluation of the service improvement you have proposed. This is a very important component of your work.

References

The APA style should be used in this work.

Appendices

Appendices are not included in the 2500 word count, so they are a useful way of including information that you use in your assignment and may want to refer to from the body of your assignment. We recommend, however, that you do not put in your appendices content such as critical thinking or conclusions from literature reviews that should be in the body of your assignment.

Marking

The pass requirement for this module is a minimum mark of 42%. We aim to give you feedback and a provisional mark on AULA within 2 weeks of submission. if there is a delay, we will inform you. It is important to recognise that these marks are provisional until ratified by the Exam Board, after which marks will be released on SOLAR.

The mark given to an assignment depends on:

The extent to which the assignment addresses the learning outcomes (see above).

How well does the assignment meet the criteria in the marking grid as shown in Appendix 2?

Appendix 1. Confidentiality Guidelines for Students’ Work

Context

The issues of breaches of confidentiality have been raised as an area of concern within students’ assessed work, and the implications this has for breaching professional codes of conduct. Confidentiality is a key element of professional (NMC, HCPC) and academic practice but at present, this is not a feature of the theoretically assessed elements of professional courses. Thus, these guidelines will provide a framework to ensure appropriate professional behaviour is instilled into your practice as students and that the University conforms to the current legal and ethical principles of confidentiality within the scope and code of professional practice.

Confidentiality and Professional Practice

Within the context of professional ethics, observing the principle of confidentiality means keeping information given by or about an individual in the course of a professional relationship secure and secret from others. Confidentiality is seen as central to the maintenance of trust between professionals and service users. Patient information is generally held under legal and ethical obligations of confidentiality, and information provided in confidence should not be used or disclosed in a form that might identify a patient without his or her consent.

N.B. Confidential information is any information obtained by a person on the understanding that they will not disclose it to others, or obtained in circumstances where it is expected that they will not disclose it. The law assumes that whenever people give personal information to health professionals caring for them, it is confidential as long as it remains personally identifiable.

Confidentiality within Assessed Work

It is good practice in your written work to never disclose a person’s name, as this may be considered a breach of confidentiality. Where an assessed piece of work requires the use of information of a client’s [1] personal case details in a health or social care context, every reasonable effort must be made to ensure the data is appropriately anonymised (this data is where the personal information is included, but from which the person cannot be identified by the recipient). This includes any information collected from written or
electronic records, details of a client’s case, opinions, images, or recordings. Failure to ensure confidentiality will result in one of two outcomes: where the breach is considered minor, the work will be returned to you for corrections, and the final award will then be subject to the late penalty deductions. Should the breach be judged to be severe, the matter will be referred to the professional suitability panel for consideration. Note: where policies, guidelines or standardised documents from clinical areas are included within assessed work, these will not need to be anonymised as these are in the public domain.
However, if the personal details of the client are included, then all details of the client must be anonymised.

To ensure you understand the consequences of breaches of confidentiality, this information is also included in all assignment guidelines.

Appendix 2: Postgraduate Assessment Criteria