Katrin Streckfuss-Bömeke, Nicolle Kränkel, Christoph Maack, Renate B Schnabel, Laura C Zelarayán, Norbert Frey, Peter Jezzard, Martina Krüger, Nico Lachmann, Susanne Lutz, Claudia Noack, Eric Schoger, Katrin Schröder, Laura C Sommerfeld, Sabine Steffens, Holger Winkels, Christina Würtz, Tanja Zeller, Eva A Rog-Zielinska, Peter Kohl
{"title":"Physiologists as medical scientists: An early warning from the German academic system.","authors":"Katrin Streckfuss-Bömeke, Nicolle Kränkel, Christoph Maack, Renate B Schnabel, Laura C Zelarayán, Norbert Frey, Peter Jezzard, Martina Krüger, Nico Lachmann, Susanne Lutz, Claudia Noack, Eric Schoger, Katrin Schröder, Laura C Sommerfeld, Sabine Steffens, Holger Winkels, Christina Würtz, Tanja Zeller, Eva A Rog-Zielinska, Peter Kohl","doi":"10.14814/phy2.70055","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>\"Medical scientists\" are postgraduate investigators who are engaged in biomedical research, and either hold a biomedical PhD or are qualified in medicine but do not participate in patient care. Medical scientists constitute ~40% of staff at medical faculties and >90% at nonuniversity medical research institutions in Germany. However, medical scientists in Germany face limited long-term career prospects and a lack of dedicated training and support programmes. They also face time limits on their career progression arising from national academic employment legislation, and imminent reforms by the German government are likely to make this worse. Nevertheless, recent developments in the educational landscape including the introduction of increasingly focused MSc, pre-PhD, and doctoral programmes to train medically aware basic scientists, as well as improved general recognition of the roles and relevance of medical scientists in health research, are encouraging. Physiologists have taken essential steps to improve the recognition of medical scientists in Germany by introducing a \"specialist physiologist\" qualification; this initiative could be applied to support medical scientists in other fields and countries. In this review, we describe the particular challenges facing medical scientists in Germany and make recommendations that may apply to other academic systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":20083,"journal":{"name":"Physiological Reports","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2000,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11513198/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Physiological Reports","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.14814/phy2.70055","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"PHYSIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
"Medical scientists" are postgraduate investigators who are engaged in biomedical research, and either hold a biomedical PhD or are qualified in medicine but do not participate in patient care. Medical scientists constitute ~40% of staff at medical faculties and >90% at nonuniversity medical research institutions in Germany. However, medical scientists in Germany face limited long-term career prospects and a lack of dedicated training and support programmes. They also face time limits on their career progression arising from national academic employment legislation, and imminent reforms by the German government are likely to make this worse. Nevertheless, recent developments in the educational landscape including the introduction of increasingly focused MSc, pre-PhD, and doctoral programmes to train medically aware basic scientists, as well as improved general recognition of the roles and relevance of medical scientists in health research, are encouraging. Physiologists have taken essential steps to improve the recognition of medical scientists in Germany by introducing a "specialist physiologist" qualification; this initiative could be applied to support medical scientists in other fields and countries. In this review, we describe the particular challenges facing medical scientists in Germany and make recommendations that may apply to other academic systems.
期刊介绍:
Physiological Reports is an online only, open access journal that will publish peer reviewed research across all areas of basic, translational, and clinical physiology and allied disciplines. Physiological Reports is a collaboration between The Physiological Society and the American Physiological Society, and is therefore in a unique position to serve the international physiology community through quick time to publication while upholding a quality standard of sound research that constitutes a useful contribution to the field.