Courses
A part of the courses that you will follow will be associated with your chosen specialisation and chosen career profile. They are part of a broad range of over 75 different biomedical courses that we offer. From this course offering you can choose additional courses with which you can further specialise or broaden your master programme. For students with a research profile, the total amount of BMS courses must cover at least 24 EC (of which at least 6 EC should be research profile courses). Students with a communication or consultancy profile need at least 30 EC of BMS courses of which 12 EC consist out of the compulsory profile courses.
For course descriptions, go to the List of BMS courses 2022/2023 in this prospectus.
Courses delivered at the Radboudumc
Please go to the List of BMS courses for an overview. Except for the two Wednesday courses (BMS11 and BMS12), all courses have a study load of 3 ECs, are delivered half time over a period of four weeks, and have contact hours either on Monday and Tuesday, or Thursday and Friday. This means that you can take two courses simultaneously. When taking courses in on Mon/Tue + Thu/Fri you will have contact hours on those days. You will need the Wednesdays for self-study assignments. The combination of a Mo/Tu course and a Thu/Fri course is therefore full time (approx. 40 hours a week).
It is also possible to make a combination of a Wednesday course with a Mo/Tu or Thu/Fri course. This will result in approx. 30 hours a week. Wednesday courses are only 1,5 EC, during 4 or 8 weeks. In this combination you can do self-study assignments in the two week days on which you do not have contact hours.
Technically, it is possible to register for three simultaneous courses (Mo/Tu + Wed + Thu/Fri). However, be aware that this will result in a study load of approximately 50 hours a week (= more than full time) which is not recommended.
In principle, you can take any course that meets your interests. That is, there are no restrictions. However, you do well ensuring that your courses add up to a coherent programme. Your specialisation coordinator can help you with this. The scheduling of the courses is based on the specialisations, profiles and what we have predicted to be the most popular and coherent programmes. That is, we have ensured that programmes that are chosen fairly often can be followed efficiently.
Moreover, you should consider the prior knowledge needed to be able to succeed in completing a course. Although there are no formal requirements for subscribing to a course, and none of the courses feature selection procedures, it could well be that teachers assume prior knowledge to be present. Also, some teachers may offer a test shortly before, or at the beginning of a course, in order to enable you to check whether your prior knowledge is adequate. It is your own responsibility to correct possible deficiencies. The prior knowledge per course is explicated in the course descriptions in this Prospectus.
External courses
You can include courses that are not delivered at the Radboudumc in the context of the master’s programme in Biomedical Sciences, but anywhere else in the world, if they meet the following conditions:
- they are being taught at a university
- they entail a study load of at least 2 ECs
- their contents does not overlap significantly with other courses you include in your programme
- they are reasonably related to biomedical sciences.
An exception to the last condition will be made for a maximum of 12 ECs of courses that need not be necessarily related to biomedical sciences. There is no maximum to the number of courses taken outside the Radboudumc, as long as you meet the requirement of 24 ECs of courses being taken at the Radboudumc. Taking courses outside the Radboudumc requires approval of the Board of Examiners.
Procedures for courses
Registering for an internal BMS course
You can subscribe to a course that is taught in the context of the BMS programme at the Radboudumc using the pre-registration which runs from 20 June – 10 July for course periods W36, W40 and W44, and from 1 August – 30 September for course periods W48, W02 and W06. Late subscription or unsubscribing is possible until 2 weeks before the start of the course, but only if there are still places available. Registration is done via Osiris, see the instruction manual here (pdf, 265 kB).
BMS course capacity
The capacity for Radboudumc BMS courses has been set between 30-60 students for most courses. Courses that usually attract more students have a higher capacity if the course coordinator agreed for this. In case the number of registered students surpasses the capacity limit, the management team will try to find an appropriate solution. If inevitable, lottery will determine which students can participate, but this is very rare. In case the capacity of a specialisation course is exceeded, first-year students will have priority (with a lottery only on second year students). However, in practice it has always been possible to place all students (1st and 2nd year) in specialisation courses.
If the number of students registered for a course is rather low, then we will consult with the students involved about continuation of the course. However, you have a right to take a course that was scheduled, even if that would result in doing the course on an individual basis.
Approval for individual or external courses
It is possible to add courses outside the BMS courses that are delivered by Radboudumc. This can be courses from another programme inside or outside the medical faculty. It can also be an individual activity set up and assessed by a teacher. If you want to add such courses (organised by another programme/faculty/university) you should first get approval from the Board of Examiners. You should use the appropriate form which you can find here. Once you have filled out the form you can email it to your Specialisation Coordinator who will email it to the Board of Examiners.
Make sure that the plan for this individual or external activity can be approved by the Board of Examiners before you start with the course. The Board of Examiners will deal with the it in their meeting. You can find an overview with dates of the Board of Examiners meetings here. Submit the form no later than 2 weeks before the relevant Board of Examiners meeting.
Please see below for the procedure of the registration of the results.
Results of internal courses
If you have taken the examination of a course that was taught within the Radboudumc, then the coordinator will inform the student administration about the result. He or she must do so within four weeks after the examination. Please ask the course coordinator, should no grade appear in Osiris within this time frame.
Results of an external course
In case you have completed a course at the Radboud University, but outside Radboudumc, you do not have to take any action. Just keep an eye on whether the result will be registered in OSIRIS.
In case you have completed a course outside the Radboud University, you will need to submit proof of your result to the student administration via the StIP (email to StudentenVoortgangsAdministratie@radboudumc.nl). Of course, this proof must bear the course coordinator’s signature.
Results of an individual course
In case you have completed an individual activity, the teacher (assessor) should use the assessment form for individual education which you can find here. The teacher should send the completed form to the Stip (email to StudentenVoortgangsAdministratie@radboudumc.nl or put it in the physical mailbox at the Stip office)