Welcome to the information page about the online course ecosystem
Exploring the Healing Potential of Medicinal Mushrooms.

This 3 stage course programme is offered in partnership with the
UK & Ireland Mycotherapy Practitioners Register.

For all enquiries and enrolment, please contact registrar@ukimpr.ie

Next course cohort starts in January 2025
Enrolment has currently closed for the full 3-stage practitioner level course 2024 intake. If you wish to enrol in the autumn of 2024 for a January 2025 start, then please email registrar@ukimpr.ie to be put on the waiting list and bookmark this page.

Thank you!

Whether you are looking to use medicinal mushrooms, are in the business of retailing them, or wish to offer their special therapeutic value to your patients or clients, within our unique course ecosystem we have something for you. Our full practitioner course route for existing healthcare practitioners is the gateway for entry to the UK & Ireland Mycotherapy Practitioners Register, and our shorter courses are ideal for interested beginners, home users, and for those who work within the wholefood and supplements retail trade. Teaching takes place over the internet, via the platforms of Google Classroom and Zoom. One to one contact with your tutor takes place by regular email.

Qualified and eligible healthcare practitioners who complete the full practitioner course (all 3 stages) can apply for membership of the UK & Ireland Mycotherapy Practitioners Register (UKIMPR); bringing medicinal mushrooms literate practitioners and practices to the public, all in one place on the web, as well as providing professional updating and subsidised access to the UK & Ireland Medicinal Mushrooms Conference for its members.

“I tell everybody what a great education this is. I’ve done many many courses over the years and I’ve never seen this quality of course”
Kelly Cogen MNIMH – Medical Herbalist

“I like knowing what I am doing and feeling I have such good practical and theoretical resources to refer to has enabled me to just get on with using mushrooms”
Jo Webster MUKIMPR MNIMH MCPP
Medical Herbalist & Nutritional Medicine Specialist

Originally born out of a collaboration between the National Institute of Medical Herbalists and The Wild Side of Life in 2020, our training course has proven to be very popular. Our track record of delivering Medicinal Mushrooms training to herb schools and naturopathic schools goes back 8 years to 2015, and we have delivered shorter programs and short courses throughout many of the herb schools in the UK & Ireland since that time, made presentations at their annual conferences and had articles about Medicinal Mushrooms published in their journals.

The course ecosystem is divided into 3 stages, each of which builds on to the previous one. It is possible to take just Stage 1 as a standalone knowledge base, take Stages 1 & 2 together to incorporate a practical medicine making option, or take all 3 stages leading to a higher level practitioner CPD qualification, either by purchasing and completing them separately, or by enrolling onto the entire course as one complete package.

Course costs:

• Stage 1: £140.00
• Stage 2: £140.00
• Stage 3: £440.00
• Practitioner course (All 3 stages paid for as one package): £680.00
• Note: Each stage builds on the previous one and is a pre-requisite for the next

For qualified health care practitioners, providing evidence of professional status after successful completion of all 3 stages of the course will enable entry into the
UKI Mycotherapy Practitioners Register, although non-healthcare practitioners can also benefit from taking the whole course if they wish; and if you are a student in an eligible healthcare discipline then you may gain entry to the register once you have qualified as a practitioner in your own right. Each of the stages of the course is a pre-requisite for taking the next stage. They cannot be taken in reverse order and the only stage that can be taken as a standalone course is Stage 1.

Course Outline

Stage 1) – An Introduction to Medicinal Mushrooms in 5 Webinars.
Cost £140.00
Level: Suitable for all levels from beginner to professional, and a prerequisite if you are planning to go on to the next stage(s). It is expected that you will spend some time researching concepts and ideas that you are not familiar with, outside of the class, and guidance will be given on how to do so by your tutor if required.
Time commitment – 12.5 hours of live / video content and 5.5 hours of reading to be completed in your own time.

This provides a thorough overview of the background knowledge to the subject via a series of 5, 2.5 hour webinars (approximately 12.5 hours in total), and extensive additional notes that are provided at the end of each webinar for your personal study. The fully referenced course materials provided are a great resource for study in their own right.

All webinars take place on Thursdays, live at 7:00 PM UTC / 2:00 PM EST / 11:00 AM PST, and are approx. 2 hours long with 30 minutes additional time for questions at the end.

NOTE: They will all be recorded, so if you miss one, or want to watch one again, you will be able to do so in your own time! If you are enrolled on Stage 1 you will be sent a link the day after each webinar was broadcast live, enabling you to watch it again.

Subject areas:

• Webinar 1, 4th January 2024: The World of the Fungi & Basic Fungal Biochemistry
• Webinar 2, 11th January 2024: The Microbiome & The Mycobiome
• One week break
• Webinar 3, 25th January 2024: Host Fungi Interactions – How the Fungi Communicate with Us
• Webinar 4, 1st February 2024: Quality Control & Methods of Utilisation of Medicinal Mushrooms
• One week break
• Webinar 5, 15th February 2024: Materia Medica – Part 1, An In-depth look at the properties of some of the medicinal mushrooms used in the course

(*Materia Medica – Part 2 is included in Module 3 during Stage 3 – the practitioner level training – introducing an additional suite of medicinal mushrooms, as well as taking fungal biochemistry to the next level, and a review of the psilocybin studies that are taking place at academic institutions around the world).

All of the delivery and discussion takes place at a ‘popular science’ level, so if you are able to read articles in the science press and are prepared to do a little independent research into areas where there are gaps in your understanding, you will be just fine.

Stage 2) – The Practical One Day Medicinal Mushroom Workshop (online via Zoom).
Date: Saturday 24th February 2024.
Time: 2:00 PM to 10:00 PM UTC / 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM EST / 6:00 AM to 2:00PM PST.
Cost: £140.00

Level: Intermediate / professional; but also suitable for those who wish to prepare mushroom extracts at home. Stage 2 is also a pre-requisite for progression to Stage 3.
Time Commitment: Approximately 8 hours with live video content and Q&A (6 hour live workshop session via Zoom), background reading, assessment and marking. 

Suitable for those who have completed Stage 1 and who either wish to formulate their own medicinal extracts, or in a retail setting, to advise others on how to extract and use medicinal mushroom raw materials (such as commercial dried mushroom powders and whole dried mushrooms), at home. This stage of the course is taught through a series of detailed online interactive video sessions where your tutor will take you through manufacturing processes that can be accomplished at home, step by step. Your tutor Fred Gillam will be present in between the Zoom video sessions to answer all of your questions, and there will be a relatively straightforward assessed component to take away and complete at the end of the day. This workshop is very useful for those who intend to formulate their own medicines and need guidance on how to do it sustainably and effectively, as well as for those in the wholefoods / supplements industry, who sell mushroom related raw materials to the general public and wish to be able to give out more detailed information about how they can be used at home.

Stage 2 skills involve assimilating information and knowledge about a set of predetermined mushroom preparation techniques and associated health, safety and sustainability issues, learning to formulate and manufacture the mushroom medicines by following each of the video demonstrations, and then calculating strength / dose related information. 

Please note: Stage 1 is an absolute pre-requisite before taking Stage 2, because Stage 2 builds on and applies the knowledge gained in Stage 1. It cannot be taken separately.

Stage 3) – Mycotherapy Practitioner Level Training – Online Modules. Cost: £440.
Level: Advanced / Professional.
Time commitment: Approximately 75 hours, with video seminars and instructional videos, study guides, core reading, assessments (submitted via Google Classroom), one to one tutorial support as required by email, and time to write the final assignment. 

Stage 3 Module Titles & Schedule: 

Set 7th  March 2024 in Google Classroom

• 3.1.1 Introduction to Field Mycology & Taxonomy
• 3.1.2 Introduction to Lab Mycology & Fungal Microscopy

Set 4th April 2024 in Google Classroom

• 3.2.1 Essential Fungal Biochemistry Part 2
• 3.2.2 Materia Medica Part 2

Set 2nd May 2024 in Google Classroom

• 3.3.1 Utilisation of Medicinal Mushrooms in Integrative Healthcare &
  Final Assignment / Professional Formation Assignment

Final completion deadline: August 30th 2024

This stage involves revisiting some of the earlier topics at a higher level as well as the introduction of a range of field-mycology (fungal ID) and basic lab-mycology (microscopy) skills, the development and delivery of mycotherapy practice within a patient-centred approach, re-visiting and extending the topic of fungal biochemistry, and the introduction of Materia Medica – Part 2, increasing the number of medicinal fungi that were covered in Stage 1 of the course. The fully referenced course materials provided are a great resource for study in their own right and will be useful for years to come.

Stage 3 raises the bar by requiring the application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation of knowledge gained from all 3 stages of the course ecosystem, within a health care practitioner context. It is assessed using multiple choice and short answer question papers, real-life problems, case studies and a final assignment. In Stage 3 the modules are assessed via a series of 6 assignments which are submitted online.

Stage 3 definitely requires more commitment than Stages 1 & 2, not just in terms of hours spent studying the course materials but also the time that will be spent doing independent research, considering its implications and completing assignments. You will be supported along the way as necessary by your tutor; mycologist, herbalist and author Fred Gillam, who will be able to offer you tutorial time via Zoom if you have difficulty with completing any of the modules. Fred holds qualifications in Integrative Healthcare & Medicine and Immunology, and is a fully qualified lecturer and Member of the Society for Education & Training (MSET). 

Completion, Certification & Accreditation

Successful completion, by achieving a pass mark of 80% or above in all of the course assignments covering all 3 Stages of the course, will result in the award of the
Practitioner Certificate in Mycotherapy, or
Certificate in Mycotherapy Studies, depending on the individual student’s practitioner / non-practitioner status at the time of completion. The certificate can be upgraded at a later date to reflect practitioner status. The full qualification is worth 100 hours of CPD.

If you have any questions about the course content, delivery or payment options for the course modules, or you would simply like to go ahead and enrol in the next cohort, then please email registrar@ukimpr.ie

 

*Additional notes on course design (the bit written in teacher-speak… don’t worry if this doesn’t all make sense to you!)

• Stage 1 course delivery is designed around levels 1 & 2 in Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Behaviours in the cognitive domain, with corresponding learning objectives.
• Stage 2 corresponds with all 3 of the lower levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Behaviours in the cognitive domain, with corresponding learning objectives and assessment methodology.
• Stage 3 corresponds to the higher levels within the framework of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Behaviours in the cognitive domain, and also incorporates the framework of the affective domain into module 3 and the final assignment, with learning objectives and assessment opportunities accordingly matched to develop and assess the student’s ability across both of these 2 domains.

The 3 Stages of our course ecosystem have been modelled on the cognitive domain of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Behaviours, and as one progresses through the 3 stages of our course ecosystem, the difficulty level should also be expected to increase, requiring more application of higher order thinking skills such as analysis and evaluation, in addition to the learning and application of knowledge, and demonstration of a receptive approach within a patient led, patient centred model.

Image credit: Xristina la, CC by SA 3.0