The Added Value of a PhD in Medicine - PhD Students’ Perceptions of Acquired Competences

Abstract

PhD in the field of medicine is more common than in any other domain. Many medical doctors are driven towards PhD, but also students with other backgrounds (usually MSc) are conducting a PhD in medical schools. Higher education has invested a lot in developing generic and research competences. Still little is known about how PhD students themselves perceive the competence of future PhDs'. The aim of this study is to determine how medical PhD students perceive their future competences and whether there is a difference between MD PhD and MSc PhD students' perceptions. Moreover this study examines students' perceptions of their learning environment and their experienced well-being.The data were collected from 163 medical PhD students. The survey data consisted of Likert type statements, open-ended questions and background variables. PhD students' perceptions of acquired competences were content analysed. The connection between conducted degree and emphasised competences were analysed using cross tabulation and χ² -test Perceptions of well-being and the learning environment were examined using descriptive statistics of scales.The results showed that PhD students considered a wide variety of competences to be central to future PhDs'. Their perception of their future competences consisted of scientific and generic competences. All students emphasised scientific competences over generic competences but MSc PhD students emphasised generic skills more than MD PhD students. PhD students' perceptions of their well-being and the learning environment showed that PhD studies are a burdening and stressful process. However students also felt that they received feedback from the scientific community.

Doctoral students’ well-being: a literature review

“…Shavers and Moore (2014)Black female voices: Self-presentation strategies in doctoral programmes at predominately white institutionsUSA15 PhD studentsQualitative11. Anttila et al (2015)The added value of a PhD in medicine—PhD students’ perceptions of acquired competencesFinland163 PhD studentsQualitative/Quantitative12. Hunter and Devine (2016)Doctoral students’ emotional exhaustion and intentions to leave academiaNine countries (most participants from Canada and the USA)186 current or recently graduated PhD studentsQualitative/quantitative13.…”

“…Although well-being was not defined in the original article presenting NORD MED, it was measured by a total of 13 items, including questions regarding stress, exhaustion, lack of regulation, anxiety, and lack of interest (based on Elo, Leppänen, & Jahkola, 2003; Mäkinen, Olkinuora, & Lonka, 2004; Maslach & Jackson, 1981; Vermunt & Van Rijswijk, 1988). In the articles included in this review, 10 items were used to investigate doctoral student well-being, including one item question on stress, four item questions on exhaustion, two item questions on anxiety (the question “ I (often) have to force myself to work on my thesis” was reported to belong to different constructs such as a lack of interest scale, anxiety scale and cynicism scale depending on which of the three articles it was used in), and three item questions on lack of interest (Anttila, Lindblom-Ylänne, Lonka, & Pyhältö, 2015; Pyhältö & Keskinen, 2012; Stubb, Pyhältö, & Lonka, 2012). Yet another study investigated experienced well-being in terms of stress, exhaustion, and cynicism in PhD studies (Cornér, Löfström, & Pyhältö, 2017).…”

“…Even though all questions used resemble the same questions used in modified NORD MED, this article refers to a Doctoral Experience Survey, which leads to the assumption that this may be yet another development of the modified NORD MED. Despite the more or less identical exploration of well-being in the above mentioned four articles, it is referred to as experienced socio-psychological well-being (Pyhältö & Keskinen, 2012), experienced well-being (Anttila et al, 2015; Stubb et al, 2012), and lack of well-being, i.e., burnout (Cornér et al, 2017). Yet, another perspective on experienced well-being may be Agency well-being , which is an adaptation of Sen’s capability approach based on the dimensions of agency, well-being, freedom and achievement (Sen, 1993) and can be understood as “as the success that individuals are having in the pursuit of their core personal projects” (Pychyl & Little, 1998, p. 458), i.e., paying particular attention to the assessment of individual goals.…”

“…Studies combining both qualitative and quantitative data used one or two open-ended questions in questionnaires (Zahniser, Rupert, & Dorociak, 2017; Anttila et al, 2015; Hunter & Devine, 2016; Pyhältö & Keskinen, 2012; Stubb et al, 2011, 2012). The remainder combined questionnaires with interviews/focus groups (Juniper et al, 2012; Pychyl & Little, 1998), which was also chosen as the preferred method among the purely qualitative articles (Haynes et al, 2012; Martinez et al, 2013; Schmidt & Umans, 2014; Shavers & Moore, 2014) with the exception of one article, which applied auto ethnography (Kumar & Cavallaro, 2018).…”

“…The qualitative data were analyzed using various analytical tools, such as thematic analysis (Hunter & Devine, 2016), the interpretive perspective (Shavers & Moore, 2014), the lifeworld concept (Schmidt & Umans, 2014), abductive or thematic content analysis (Anttila et al, 2015; Hunter & Devine, 2016; Pyhältö & Keskinen, 2012; Stubb et al, 2011, 2012), grounded theory (Martinez et al, 2013; Pychyl & Little, 1998), metaphorical analysis (Haynes et al, 2012), constant comparative method (Martinez et al, 2013) and retrospective analysis of own experiences (Kumar & Cavallaro, 2018). Quantitative data was analyzed by applying descriptive or comparative statistical methods (Herrmann & Wichmann-Hansen, 2017; Pychyl & Little, 1998; Pyhältö & Keskinen, 2012; Stubb et al, 2011, 2012) as well as variance analysis such as ANOVA (Hunter & Devine, 2016; Juniper et al, 2012; Stubb et al, 2012; Ziapour, Khatony, Jafari, & Kianipour, 2017), correlation (Pychyl & Little, 1998; Stubb et al, 2012), and regression (Hunter & Devine, 2016; Pychyl & Little, 1998).…”