Medicine (Western Health)

Intended learning outcomes

On completion of this Honours program, students should have acquired:

• Demonstrated ability to formulate research questions for basic sciences and for clinical research within medical research
• Ability to apply ethical principles to the conduct of research for both basic sciences (cell biology studies/animal experimentation/animal ethics) and in clinical studies (clinical staging and recruitment/patient interactions/human ethics)
• Demonstrated expertise in all aspects of research design, including establishing an overall hypothesis, aligning the specific aims of the experiments with the key hypotheses, definition and selection of populations, understanding of the sampling approach, comprehensive description and understanding of data collection and of scientific methods that lead to meaningful statistical analysis aligned with the hypothesis
• Application of critical and analytical skills to the identification and resolution of problems that arise in the conduct of research in general as well as in basics sciences and clinical studies in medical research
• Proficiency in accessing, searching and summarising published research in medical research to ensure that the student understands the history, the context and the purpose of the medical research project being undertaken
• Demonstrated skills in communicating the findings of a research project, both in written and oral form and in articulating the background reasons for the project as well as how the hypotheses lead to the specific aims of the project
• Ability to explain and justify why fundamental research in the basic sciences and clinical sciences is necessary and to articulate how this work addresses real-world problems and challenges.