Brief profile
Roché Steyn has qualifications as indicated above. His research, teaching and practice have involved: malpractice law applied in medicine and psychology; multidisciplinary project management; multinational criminal law and the law of delict/tort; legal (forensic) psychology; industrial psychology; health psychology and integrative medicine. Professionally applied English has been a strong feature in his endeavours in those areas, and this aspect has been incorporated into his current teaching. Through his various activities, he continues to develop holistic perspective on key interactions between law, medicine, psychology and management. His research in the area of integrative medicine is currently being expanded through his work for the Malie Fourie Foundation and in the Preventive Integrative Medicine division of Multiplin. For further information regarding his services on legal cases involving medicine or psychology, see the Medicine and Law and Psychology and Law divisions of Multiplin.


Further Background Information
Roché Steyn started his professional education at the University of Pretoria with simultaneous studies in law and psychology, integrating the requirements for undergraduate psychology with the requirements for undergraduate law. His aim was interdisciplinary study right from the start. His efforts earned him the BLC degree (with additional courses in psychology and criminology).

During his undergraduate studies he also started working (and then continued to work part-time throughout his studies) as a freelance editor, inter alia translating and editing the final-year LLB criminal law material at UP, and editing a number of MBA dissertations as well as the Strategic Management Plan for the Department of Welfare and Population Development (Gauteng).

Following his BLC (first degree), he embarked on a combination of the LLB degree and Honours degree in psychology, having been granted permission to complete these degrees simultaneously.

He then went on to combine studies in medical law (focusing on malpractice liability in clinical psychology and psychiatry) and management, completing the LLM degree and the Advanced Diploma in Project Management concurrently. He was awarded the Carmen Nathan Grant of the Unit for Medicine and Law of the University of Pretoria and Unisa to conduct research in the United States for the purpose of his LLM. The simultaneous completion of the LLM and the AdvDipPM allowed him to incorporate selected principles of project management into his LLM work (in the shape of HMM).

He achieved distinctions in each of the requirements for the LLM (one of which was a single-session oral examination in medical law, criminal law and the law of delict, with a panel of five distinguished professors, including Prof SA Strauss SC and Prof CR Snyman). He obtained both the AdvDipPM and the LLM cum laude.

By the time of completing the above qualifications (2002), the development of Multiplin had already begun (in collaboration with Christopher Woodrow and Hilary Anderson), and the following year he also started teaching part-time at the University of Leicester (where he taught medical law, tort law, and criminal law), while continuing his consulting and doctoral work on the interactions of law, medicine, psychology and management (through Unisa). Multiplin LLP was founded and incorporated in England and Wales in the same year (2003), with the aim of promoting integrative multidisciplinary development through consulting and education. Multiplin indeed still fulfils that aim in all its current endeavours. Multiplin LLP was later complemented by a sister company, Multiplin (Pty) Ltd, in South Africa.

On the basis of his performance in his LLM, he was selected to receive the H Bradlow Scholarship to support his doctoral research. His doctoral work deepened and broadened his analysis of malpractice law (as applied in clinical medicine and surgery), and expanded the analysis to include applications in business psychology (integrating aspects of law, management and psychology). Further important aspects covered in the doctoral thesis include: the role of health psychology in medical law; the scope of clinical and preventive integrative medicine, with examples of applications and the legal position in respect thereof; and the roles of law and psychology in the development of a more integrative mainstream medical practice.

His LLD thesis was unanimously accepted by a set of four doctoral examiners, and he was accordingly admitted to the degree (in September, 2005).

In 2007, he was appointed as a Principal Lecturer at Cranefield College, where he led the successful implementation of Multiplin-developed courses through multimedia distance learning (which he initiated at the College). Multiplin at the same time entered into a collaboration agreement with Cranefield, in terms of which Multiplin managed the short courses presented through the College.

In 2013, Cranefield College initiated steps to convert from a mixed-mode institution (with students needing to attend onsite classes) to a full distance-mode institution (where online classes can be substituted for any or all onsite classes). Multimedia distance learning subsequently effectively became the mode through which all courses and programmes at the College are delivered. Due to the fact that all learning materials are delivered online (rather than through a variety of media), however, the term ‘multimedia distance learning’ was replaced by ‘technology-enhanced distance learning’.

In 2016, he was appointed as the chief legal officer (CLO) of the College, in addition to his lecturing role, and the agreement between Cranefield and Multiplin was changed from one where Multiplin manages selected short courses, to one where it provides integrative course packages for multiplin-developed short courses, with the course delivery being managed exclusively by the College itself.

In addition to his activities through Multiplin, he currently maintains his CLO and Principal Lecturer position at Cranefield College, and continues to write, to teach and to consult in his areas of interdisciplinary expertise. He teaches on various courses in Law, Project Management and Advanced Legal/Business English, and is also responsible for continuing professional development (CPD) at the College. Two Multiplin-developed CPD courses for different categories of health professionals are set to be launched in 2024.

He has published a number of articles, and is currently completing work on a practical textbook on Malpractice Law (with Christopher Woodrow) due to be published in 2024. In his writing, teaching and practice, he continually advocates the need for partnership and integration between medicine and law (and relevant areas of psychology and management), as well as different areas within medicine and those within law.

He enjoys traveling, which has included various destinations in the UK and Ireland, Western and Eastern Europe, Zanzibar and Africa (especially Southern Africa), Asia and Australia, and the USA; he values experiencing a variety of languages and cultures, and is passionate about wildlife and the natural environment. His leisure activities include snorkeling and scuba-diving, skiing, hiking and mountain-biking, and playing guitar and piano.