My name’s Adrian Georghe, I’m from Romania and I graduated from
the MSc Health Economics and Health Policy in 2010.
After having graduated I started a PhD in health economics
and I’m based in primary care clinical sciences now.
Well I graduated from Management and Pharmacy and I literally came
to the MSc two days after having graduated from Pharmacy, so it’s a
bit of a short story.
What I really liked about the programme was the specific health policy
component which I was interested in and also I thought an advantage
of the programme was a good mix of students like me with no
experience and health professionals.
I thought this mix would give the programme a good outcome.
I think what I really liked was that within the teaching sessions there
was a lot of time left for discussions and debates, which definitely used
the students/health professionals mix that I was talking about to the
maximum.
Also the staff of the health economics unit is very friendly
and helpful.
Also a plus is that we received feedback, intermediate
feedback, for essays and assignments just halfway through, just to
make sure that we were on the right track.
I think that was helpful.
I think time management was one of them.
The MSc is delivered in block week sessions, so you have a full week
of teaching and then you have two or three weeks where you have no
academic activities at all, you have time to prepare for essays and assignments.
Now this may seem like a long time, three weeks, without
having to come to uni formally but it’s actually not a lot of
time at all if you want to do the job properly.
So time management is really really important.
Also I found it a bit challenging coming from a different
country to come to grips with the UK institutions and frameworks.
The MSc is particularly focused on the UK healthcare system so this was a bit
challenging at the beginning but the health economics unit provided some
induction sessions on the UK NHS which made things a bit easier.
In my case it was quite all right, I actually had time to be a member of s
sports team at the uni so I think I managed to organise my time fairly
well, but this again depends on every individual.
Well, health economics is a growing field and there will definitely be a
need for health economists in the future.
Now, having come from a clinical background, pharmacy, I would say
that this programme is likely to make me more employable because
it widens the perspective towards the larger issues in the healthcare
system.
Well I would say try and gather as much information about the
programme as you can.
The staff from the health economics unit are helpful in responses so you’ll get all the
information you need as long as you ask.
If you want something new and exciting in terms of
healthcare issues, I think that’s the programme for you.