engleski

Attitudes towards interdisciplinarity among Faculty of Medicine Osijek PhD students

Introduction: Interdisciplinarity refers to a method or way of thinking that combines traditional concepts and methods in order to achieve a new approach. Interdisciplinarity is an increasingly important concept in academic research and the private sector. Interdisciplinary work includes the integration of separate areas in order to create a deeper understanding of some research issue. The aim of this study was to explore the attitudes towards interdisciplinarity among Faculty of Medicine Osijek PhD students. Materials and methods: Within this cross-sectional study, on-line anonymous questionnaire was self-administered to representative PhD student sample of Faculty of Medicine Osijek in the period from May to September 2016. General demographic data, as well as data on academic features and data related to attitudes towards interdisciplinarity among PhD students were collected. Results: The study sample included 206 PhD students, the average age being 39 (range 25-57) years, 29.6% males and 70.4% females. There were 12.1% of those who obtained their PhD title and 87.9% who did not. Considering the PhD students educational background there were 72.3% of medical doctors, 19.0% of PhD students of other health professions such as dentist, nurses and pharmacists and 8.7% of PhD students of other educational background. 78.6% of all PhD students reported that they want to attend interdisciplinary module within their PhD program. When looking what kind of interdisciplinary module, they want to attend, the study revealed that 3.1% of PhD students wanted to attend module from the technical sciences, 21.0% module from the biotechnical sciences, 27.8% module from the natural sciences, 14.2% module from the social sciences, 17.9% module from the humanities and 16.0% mixed module that contain several previously mentioned field of sciences. Conclusions: The vast majority of Faculty of Medicine Osijek PhD students had expressed positive attitudes towards possibility of interdisciplinary education within their PhD program. Interdisciplinary education exposes students to research in multiple disciplines, trains them in collaborative methods through team research, and promotes new forms of communication and collaboration among disciplines thus should be strongly promoted within PhD training in health sciences and biomedicine.

PhD training ; PhD program ; interdisciplinary education ; Croatia

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