[Doctoral thesis projects for medical students? Retrospective estimation of the fraction of successfully completed medical doctoral thesis projects at Witten/Herdecke University]

Abstract

Background: The German "Dr med" plays a specific role in doctoral thesis settings since students may start the underlying doctoral project during their studies at medical school. If a Medical Faculty principally encourages this approach, then it should support the students in performing the respective projects as efficiently as possible. Consequently, it must be ensured that students are able to implement and complete a doctoral project in parallel to their studies. As a characteristic efficiency feature of these "Dr med" initiatives, the proportion of doctoral projects successfully completed shortly after graduating from medical school is proposed and illustrated.

Methods: The proposed characteristic can be estimated by the time period between the state examination (date of completion of the qualifying medical examination) and the doctoral examination. Completion of the doctoral project "during their medical studies" was then characterised by a doctoral examination no later than 12 months after the qualifying medical state examination. To illustrate the estimation and interpretation of this characteristic, it was retrospectively estimated on the basis of the full sample of all doctorates successfully completed between July 2009 and June 2012 at the Department of Human Medicine at the Faculty of Health of the University of Witten/Herdecke.

Results: During the period of investigation defined, a total number of 56 doctoral examinations were documented, 30 % of which were completed within 12 months after the qualifying medical state examination (95% confidence interval 19 to 44 %). The median duration between state and doctoral examination was 27 months. The proportion of doctoral projects completed parallel to the medical studies increased during the investigation period from 14 % in the first year (July 2009 till June 2010) to 40 % in the third year (July 2011 till June 2012).

Conclusion: Only about a third of all "Dr med" projects at the Witten/Herdecke Faculty of Health were completed during or close to the qualifying medical studies. This proportion, however, increased after the introduction of a curriculum on research methodology and practice in 2010; prospective longitudinal studies will have to clarify whether this is causal or mere chronological coincidence. In summary, the proposed method for determining the process efficiency of a medical faculty's "Dr med" programme has proven to be both feasible and informative.

Keywords: Curriculum Forschungsmethodik; Doctoral degree; Dr med; Promotion; Studiums-begleitende Promotion; doctoral programme parallel with medical studies; research methods curriculum; „Dr. med.“.