MPH5236 Clinical trials
Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences
MPH5236 Clinical trials is a level 5, 6-credit-point, postgraduate unit from the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, offered in 2025 in Semester 1 at Alfred Hospital. It needs MPH5040 and MPH5041.
- Credit points
- 6
- Offered in 2025
- Semester 1
- Alfred Hospital
- Assessment
- Exam 20%
- and 3 other tasks
This is the 2025 handbook entry. See the 2027 entry.
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Requisites
Before MPH5236
Prerequisites
Pass these before you enrol.
Prohibitions
You can't enrol if you have passed any of these.
After MPH5236
No unit lists MPH5236 as a prerequisite in the 2025 handbook.
Equivalent units
The same content under another code. Only one of them counts.
Overview
The term "clinically proven", used throughout even the lay vernacular, highlights the high status of clinical trials in health research. This is because clinical trials provide the most robust evidence of the benefits of healthcare interventions; they are the 'gold standard' study design.
A solid understanding of clinical trials is a key requirement for anyone working in clinical research, or who need to interpret the results of clinical research.
This unit will equip you with the skills to formulate research questions, design appropriate clinical trials, select and recruit study subjects, conduct randomisation, analyse data, interpret findings, manage outcomes and consider issues of ethics, budget and quality assurance. It will also endow you with the skills to critically appraise clinical trials.
Offerings in 2025
| Teaching period | Campus | Mode |
|---|---|---|
| First semester | Alfred Hospital | Bld blk |
Assessment
- Critical reflections (1,800 words - 10 x 180 words)Written30%
- Online test (30 minutes)Quiz / Test10%
- Exam (60 minutes)Examination20%
- Study protocol (2,400 words)WrittenThreshold hurdle40%
Learning outcomes
When you finish this unit, you should be able to:
- 1
Examine the principles of clinical trials and understand their role in informing healthcare practice and policy.
- 2
Critically analyse the theoretical approaches to clinical trials, including different types of clinical trials, and the strengths and limitations of each.
- 3
Formulate a meaningful question that has relevance to clinical practice or public health, design the right trial for the question, and articulate this design in a study protocol.
- 4
Critically appraise a published clinical trial in order to determine its validity or otherwise to real-life practice and policy.
- 5
Explain the importance of communication between key stakeholders in clinical trials.
- 6
Investigate the practical considerations of undertaking clinical trials, including planning, gaining ethics approval, recruitment and retention of subjects, measurement of outcomes and data analyses.
Workload and teaching
- Workshops16 hours
- Teaching approachActive learning
6 hours of teacher-directed learning activities per week, and 6 hours of self-directed study per week, plus two on-campus Block Days.
For full details of the teaching approach to this unit, please refer to Moodle.
Learning resources
Required resources
See Moodle for details about required resources.
Contacts
- Chief Examiners
- Dr Stella Talic
- Unit Coordinators
- Dr Stella Talic