engleski

Self-perceived competency in transferable skills of PhD students at Medical Faculty Osijek, Croatia

Training in transferable skills belongs to basic standards for PhD education in biomedicine and health sciences in Europe set by ORPHEUS, AMSE and WFME. The aim of this study was to asses students’ attitude towards importance of different transferable skills for their future scientific career and to ask them to grade their competency in skills offered during formal PhD education at our institution. For that purpose 75 PhD students and postdocs were given a questionnaire covering 14 transferable skills, including biomedical ethics, biostatistics, theoretical and practical knowledge of laboratory techniques, literature search and critical reading, writing scientific papers, presentation of scientific data etc. Offered score range was from 1 to 5. Overall students and postdocs found most of the assessed skills important for their future career with average grade of 4.3±0.47. However, according to students, less important skills were knowledge and practice in laboratory techniques (3.48±0.13 and 3.36±0.14). When compared between the groups of students, we found that clinicians had less interest in laboratory skills when compared to PhD student coming from basic medical sciences (p=0.006). They reported average to very good self-perceived competence in most of the skills (3.54±0.59) and felt least competent in biostatistics and laboratory work (2.85±0.12 and 2.87±0.16, respectively). PhD students of dental background reported significantly lower self perceived competence in several assessed skills ; however, all of them were enrolled in first year of PhD programme. Results of our study showed that most of PhD students and postdocs have positive perception of importance of acquiring transferable skills for their future scientific career. Inferior skills should be considered for additional courses.

Transferable skills; PhD students

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