Course structure

Medical peace work is a vast field of practice, and this course will give you a brief overview of the principles.

Although medical peace work is not strictly a medical specialty (like cardiology or surgery), the lessons it offer are much broader. In fact, a basic understanding of violence prevention and peace practice is highly relevant for all healthcare practitioners – no matter where they work or what position they hold. This course will give you an overview of some key concepts and dilemmas in this field. You will be taught by educators who are experienced in the theory, field work, and advocacy aspects of medical peace work.

The course is divided into three weeks:

• Week 1: Domestic violence
• Week 2: Refugee health
• Week 3: Healing torture victims

Each week is designed to take around 2-4 hours of study, which totals to 6-12 hours across the 3 weeks of this course. Each week covers a very different topic, and you may find yourself spending more or less time on a particular topic, depending on your interests and experience. We will help you make connections between the 3 topics, and understand them within the framework of medical peace work.

The big-picture question: what does peace have to do with health?

Each week is separated into approximately 20 discrete steps. So you can choose to study all the steps in a single sitting; or work through 2-3 steps in 15 minute breaks over lunch; or spread the workload over any time period which suits you.

Please introduce yourself!

This course will not be facilitated by educators, but we encourage you to interact with your fellow participants. If you like, you are free to use the comment space below to tell the other participants a bit about yourself, which country you come from and your motivations for doing this course. What are your skills, strengths and experiences in this area? What would you like to learn more about?

New to FutureLearn?

If you are new to FutureLearn, reading this guide will help you better understand how it works.