Celebrating the 2019-20 Academic Year
Our biggest postgraduate success stories from around the College this academic year. Read more about the fantastic achievements of our postgraduate community, including staff awards, subject rankings and much, much more!
PTES results
The College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine has once again performed extremely well in the annual PTES [Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey] results. CMVM earned an 88% overall satisfaction rate, which is higher than the 82% Russell Group average.
Furthermore, several online programmes earned scores of 100% in overall satisfaction. These results are a reflection of the hard work being done by our postgraduate teaching staff year-round – congratulations to everyone involved on this wonderful achievement.
"We are delighted to hear that our students were so satisfied. It is very clear to us that this would not have been achievable without all of the tremendous hard work put in by our lecturers and tutors, as every member of our team has contributed to the students’ experience and overall satisfaction. We want to say a huge thank you to all of our tutors and team members, and to the students for being so engaged and managing what has been a very difficult few months."
Dr Domenica Coxon, Academic e-Facilitator, MSc Patient Safety & Clinical Human Factors
"We are delighted that so many of our students took time to give feedback on their experience on the MSc in Paediatric Emergency Medicine Online Learning Programme. It is gratifying to see the positive response and know that the programme is helping doctors from around the world improve and develop their knowledge and skill set, allowing them to perform to the highest level in their field. It reflects both the engagement of our students and the support provided by all our staff."
Dr Tom Beattie, Programme Director, MSc Paediatric Emergency Medicine
MSc Critical Care
As the Covid-19 pandemic hit, the MSc Critical Care - in conjunction with the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh - made a number of its courses available online for free in a bid to support frontline NHS staff in the fight against Covid-19.
The information was designed to equip clinical staff and healthcare providers with the tools to combat the virus and save lives.
The resources were designed to support those who are treating critically ill patients for the first time and clinicians who were returning to the frontline after some time away.
Online education hub
The Covid-19 Critical Care Education Resource – hosted on social learning platform FutureLearn– provides access to professional knowledge and expertise covering routine critical care activities, as well as Covid-19 specific education. It also provides practical tools for self-care and staff wellbeing.
Academics hope the learning resource will have an impact beyond the UK, particularly in supporting clinicians working in under-resourced environments.
Critical care focuses on the patient, their family, and the staff who look after them. As learners and teachers, it is our privilege to create a community of learning with the common goal of improving patient care and outcome whilst supporting staff. These are the principles upon which our MSc Critical Care programme is based. This resource is entirely open access and we hope that it will benefit staff in our NHS and beyond.
We are extremely proud of the MSc Critical Care team for all of their hard work in putting this resource together so quickly. Within 2 days, over 10,500 healthcare professionals had already signed up from 157 countries around the world.
Well done team!
You can find a YouTube video about the Future Learn project and how the team developed it below.
Community through Crisis video
BMTO milestones
We’re pleased to announce that two of our online programmes have reached some very impressive milestones this year. The Global Health and Infectious Diseases programme will celebrate its 100th MSc graduate in 2020, while the MSc Biodiversity, Wildlife and Ecosystem Health reaches its 10th anniversary.
Both programmes, located within the Deanery of Biomedical Sciences, are designed to equip health professionals around the world with the knowledge and skills to tackle regional and global health challenges. We invited programme directors to share their thoughts on what the online masters have achieved so far:
"This year our programme, Global Health and Infectious Diseases will celebrate its 100th MSc graduate. To mark this milestone and the achievements of our amazing students, we want to collect as many stories as we can from our graduates. Our alumni are a diverse community from all over the world, this milestone event gives us the opportunity to come together and share our personal and professional experiences during this time and to discuss how global health and infectious diseases influence our daily lives."
Dr Jenna Fyfe, Deputy Programme Director, MSc Global Health and Infectious Diseases
“The MSc in Biodiversity welcomed its first 27 students in September 2010 and this summer, 10 years on, we will see our number of graduates exceed 200. Our students over that time have come from all continents except Antarctica and have brought knowledge and experience from a wide range of academic and professional disciplines. They have also consistently brought passion, commitment and a genuine desire to contribute to the welfare of our planet and I am very proud of our efforts to support those students achieve their goals and go on to make a difference in the world.”
Dr Sharron Ogle, Programme Director, MSc Biodiversity, Wildlife and Ecosystem Health
Chancellor's Award 2019
Professor Charles ffrench-Constant, Professor of Neurology at MRC-CRM and Dean of Research for the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine, has been awarded the 2019 Chancellor’s Award for Research. The Chancellor’s Awards are one of the most important ways in which the University of Edinburgh recognises current members of the University community. Professor ffrench-Constant was the recipient of the Chancellor’s Award for Research in recognition of his outstanding internationally regarded research in the field of Neurobiology and also for inspiring and supporting colleagues, peers and younger scientists.
Edinburgh University Students' Association (EUSA) teaching awards
The Postgraduate Taught team at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies received 9 nominations for the Edinburgh University Students' Association (EUSA) teaching awards. You can read a full list of winners from this year's Teaching Awards via the link below.
ShanghaiRankings 2020
The Dick Vet has risen in the ShanghaiRanking's Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2020 - Veterinary Sciences to second in the world, a rise of two places from the 2019 rankings and the top placed UK School for the second year running.
Consistent Excellence
These are the first subject league tables to be released in 2020 and follow the Dick Vet ranking consistently highly in 2019, when the School topped the Guardian league table for the third year in a row and came first in the Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide ranking for Veterinary Medicine, for the 5th year running.
The School prides itself on its world class teaching, research and clinical care and is based on the purpose built Easter Bush Campus.
#StopMS campaign
On the 8th of October the MS Society’s Stop MS Appeal went live to the public. It aims to raise £100 million over the next 10 years in order to spur on the research going into treatments for multiple sclerosis, a neurodegenerative disease which affects more than 100 000 people in the UK alone.
Anna Williams, Professor of Regenerative Neurology at the University of Edinburgh, was featured in the BBC News at Six alongside the announcement of the Stop MS Appeal launch because of her team’s ground-breaking research into the mechanisms by which the nerve-protecting myelin sheath becomes damaged during MS, and what can be done to stimulate its repair.
Sustainability Awards
Sharon Boyd (pictured right) is a Senior Lecturer in Distance Student Learning and Deputy Director of the MVetSci in Advanced Clinical Practice. Sharon was named a finalist in the 2019 Green Gown Awards (UK and Ireland) in the Sustainability Champion: Staff category in November.
Her nomination was supported by the University as it built on the Social Responsibility and Sustainability Changemaker 2018 award Sharon received at the Department for Social Responsibility and Sustainability 2018 Sustainability Awards earlier in the year.
Both of these awards focused on the work Sharon has done with colleagues to embed social responsibility and sustainability into the Vet School curriculum, as well as making the link between student experience, student wellbeing and sustainability explicit.
This has led to the work Sharon is currently doing as part of the Vet Sustain group looking at sustainability in the veterinary curricula with colleagues from vet schools across the UK.
Green Gown Awards 2019 finalists
Congratulations Sharon!