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Centre of Excellence Healthcare
Based at our Online campus, this Centre of Excellence offers a range of programmes, resources, and partnerships to equip you with the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in the field of healthcare.
What is a Centre of Excellence?
A Centre of Excellence is a facility that provides best practice and knowledge around a particular area. Our Centres of Excellence offer you the opportunity to study your chosen law specialism with dedicated support from our expert lecturers. You’ll benefit from their knowledge and experience within healthcare.
Across our different Centres of Excellence, we work with governing bodies and provide specialist modules and electives that allow you to shape your studies to meet your career needs.
Our Centre of Excellence for Healthcare focuses on the policy and regulation around the delivery of the healthcare system. It also explores ethical issues based on current challenges and opportunities.
The critical issues that healthcare law seek to address have global consequences, so the international nature of our Online campus provides an excellent opportunity for students worldwide to engage in comprehensive discussions about these issues. We also provide a teaching hub for this subject area at our London Bloomsbury and Manchester campuses.
What is Healthcare Law?
Healthcare law refers to the legal principles, rules and regulations that govern the healthcare industry. It encompasses a wide range of topics, including healthcare providers’ rights and responsibilities, patients’ rights, medical negligence, healthcare confidentiality, and regulation of healthcare professionals. Healthcare law plays a crucial role in ensuring that patients receive high-quality care and that healthcare providers operate ethically and legally.
Lawyers do not need to have received formal medical training to work in this sector. However, the ability to negotiate and empathise is important within healthcare law, as well as the ability to analyse medical reports.
Students with a professional legal background may use their studies to specialise in medico-legal areas such as expert witnesses or clinical governance, or become a legal specialist in clinical negligence, personal injury, mental health law and Court of Protection. You can also work in bioethics governance, regulation, healthcare management, as a policy adviser or move into an enhanced healthcare professional career.
The named programmes we offer within healthcare law are:
Suggested modules
We offer modules covering many different areas of law so you can tailor your Master’s to meet your interests and career goals. With our Master of Laws (LLM) programmes, you will have a minimum of one award-linked module, which you must write your dissertation on, and you can choose up to three elective modules.
For all programmes, you must choose two modules from Group A and two from Group B. For our healthcare courses, we recommend the following modules, however you have the option to choose from our full range of elective modules.
Group A
- Legal Ethics
- Medical Law and Ethics
Group B
- Healthcare Regulation
- Mental Health Law
Our Lecturers
Our faculty members are recognised experts in the field, conducting cutting-edge research and engaging with industry leaders to shape the direction of policy and law.
Vicky Gregory – Head of Academic Master’s in Law Programmes
Vicky completed her LLB at University College London, graduating with First Class Honours. She then studied a MA in Medical Ethics and Law at King’s College London, and the Legal Practice Course at the University of Law’s Bloomsbury campus (then the College of Law) obtaining a Distinction. Vicky qualified as a solicitor in 2013, completing her training contract in purely healthcare related seats before qualifying as a Healthcare Regulatory lawyer. Throughout her legal career, she has worked primarily in healthcare regulation, including time spent in-house with a regulator.
Vicky moved into legal education in 2015 and joined The University of Law in November 2021. She is currently the Head of Academic Master’s in Law Programmes. Vicky’s expertise lies in Healthcare Regulation (having co-designed the module), Legal Ethics (also having co-designed the module), Medical Law and Ethics, and Mental Health Law, as well as supervising dissertations within these specialisms.
Vicky commenced her PhD at University College London in September 2023, having been awarded the Faculty of Laws Research Opportunity Scholarship. Her research focuses on the place of dishonesty within healthcare professional regulatory practice.
Vicky is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, having been nominated for the latter as a Centenary Young Fellow. She is also a member of the Association of Regulatory and Disciplinary Lawyers.
Jo Samanta – Programme and Student Lead
Having spent several years working as a midwife in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, Jo returned to the UK and embarked on a law conversion course, subsequently qualifiying as a solicitor. Jo particularly enjoyed working in clinical negligence and personal injury, mainly claimant catastrophic head injury cases. After giving several presentations and leading training events to local hospitals and patient interest groups, Jo eventually decided to become an academic medical lawyer.
Want to hear more from our lecturers?
Our lecturers have delivered a range of research seminars, including “First Do No Harm: Truth Telling in Medicine” by Vicky Gregory which explores the ethical and legal consequences of withholding information from patients, and “Terminal Sedation: Euthanasia by the Back Door?” by Jo Samanta which discusses whether terminal sedation is considered a type of covert euthanasia.
