This course provides an overview of the organization, staffing, and function of the medical department. The role and responsibility of each function is discussed, together with staff recruitment and training issues. The major emphasis of this course is on key management skills other than financial and marketing (covered in PHPH9124), namely personal skills (e.g. time management, delegation, team management, communication, conduct of meetings, etc.); human resource (HR) management (e.g. HR strategies, HR laws conventions and ethics, communication, performance assessment, etc.), project management (e.g., the project life cycle, planning the life cycle, progressing the plan, controlling the programme, assessing and closing the project, etc.); and crisis management (principles of crisis management, managing a crisis, learning from a crisis, etc.). These topics will relate to issues covered in preceding courses (drug development, clinical trials, pharmacovigilance, supply of information, etc.) and will be based extensively on case histories and hypothetical scenarios. The role and responsibilities of the pharmaceutical physician in each of these areas will be discussed and will be the theme of the weekend workshop for this course. Students will spend at least one full day working with their mentor in a medical department gaining background and experience in the skills referred to above. This course is available only for programme 5511.