[The German academic degree "Dr. med." is better than its reputation. Results of a questionnaire of doctoral students].

BACKGROUND: Recently there were mostly emotional debates about the scientific background and relevance of the German academic title "Dr. med.", while objective data are scarce.
METHODS: When submitting their doctoral thesis at the Medical School of Hannover students were asked anonymously about the type, topic, duration, quality of supervision as well as frequency and type of publication of the results.
RESULTS: 180 doctoral candidates (62% women) participated in the study. The supervision was graded as good by the majority of students. The duration working on the thesis was equivalent to 47 weeks of a full time employment. There was some negative influence in participating in lectures and courses. Nearly all participants (98%) would recommend younger students to work on a dissertation as they had done themselves in parallel to the curriculum. The ability of how to interprete scientific data was assumed to be positively influenced. About two thirds stated that the results had been published in original articles at the time of submitting the thesis.
CONCLUSIONS: More data from other medical faculties are needed to document the relevance of the medical dissertation to replace the emotional by a more rational debate. © Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.