Objectives: To identify underlying causes for failure of medical thesis
projects and the constantly high drop-out rate in Germany from the
supervisors' perspective and to compare the results with the students'
perspective. Setting: Cross-sectional survey. Online questionnaire for survey
of medical thesis supervisors among the staff of Charité—Universitätsmedizin
Berlin, Germany. Published, earlier longitudinal survey among students for
comparison. Participants: 1069 thesis supervisors participated. Data
extraction and synthesis: Data are presented using descriptive statistics, and
the χ2 test served to compare the results among supervisors with the earlier
data from the longitudinal survey of doctoral students. Primary and secondary
outcomes: Not applicable. This survey is an observational study. Results: Of
3653 potential participants, 1069 (29.3%) supervising 3744 doctoral candidates
participated in the study. Supervisors considered themselves to be highly
motivated and to offer adequate supervision. On the other hand, 87% stated
that they did not feel well prepared for thesis supervision. Supervisors gave
lack of timeliness of doctoral students and personal differences (p=0.024 and
p=0.001) as the main reasons for terminating thesis projects. Doctoral
students predominantly mentioned methodological problems and difficult
subjects as critical issues (p=0.001 and p<0.001). Specifically, students felt
ill prepared for the statistical part of their research—49.5% stated that they
never received statistical assistance, whereas 97% of supervisors claimed to
help their students with statistical analysis. Conclusions: The authors found
that both thesis supervisors and medical students feel ill prepared for their
roles in the process of a medical dissertation. Contradictory reasons for
terminating medical thesis projects based on supervisors' and students' self-
assessment suggest a lack of communication and true scientific collaboration
between supervisors and doctoral students as the major underlying issue that
requires resolution