The start of ORPHEUS In April 2004, a European Conference on Harmonisation of PhD Programmes in Biomedicine and Health Sciences was held in Zagreb. It became clear that PhD programmes are so different that even a PhD title has a different meaning in different parts of Europe. While some countries did not have any clinical PhD programmes, others had even two. Therefore, delegates coming from 25 universities and 16 European countries agreed that there is a need for European harmonisation and they accepted ‘The Declaration of the European Conference on Harmonisation of PhD Programmes in Medicine and Health Sciences’ (‘Zagreb Declaration’), which contains the first European consensus statement what a PhD programme should be. Close similarities between the ‘Zagreb Declaration’ and ’10 Salzburg Principles’ (Bologna Seminar, Salzburg, 2005) are not surprising… |
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On 15 October 2008, in WFME Office, Copenhagen the meeting was held between representative of ORPHEUS (President Zdravko Lackovic), Association of Medical School in Europe (AMSE) (President David Gordon) and World Federation of Medical Education (WFME) (Immediate past-President Hans Karle). Formal agreement was reached for the three organisations to work together create a document setting out agreed essential and desirable standards for the PhD degree in medical faculties and schools in Europe. In the following year general assemblies of all three organizations accepted agreement. In Aarhus conference 2009 preliminary consensus document “Towards Standards for PhD Education in Biomedicine and Health Sciences” was accepted. Task force meeting was held in Zagreb 25-27th October 2010.Michel J Mulvany has chaired a Task Force consisting of representatives for ORPHEUS, AMSE and WFME to prepare a draft “Standards for PhD education in Biomedicine and Health Sciences” to be discussed at ORPHEUS2011. The standards are based on the ORPHEUS position paper and put into the WFME format of standards for pre- and postgraduate medical education. The Task Force has held one meeting in Zagreb, 25-27 October 2010. Further drafts were prepared primarily by e-mail. At the end of 2012 document that became widely known in Europe was printed by Aarhus University Press.
The ORPHEUS conferences
- 2004. European Conference on Harmonisation of PhD Programmes in Biomedicine and Health Sciences was held in Zagreb at which the ‘Zagreb Declaration‘ was agreed.
- 2005. Second European Conference held in Zagreb, included delegates from 33 universities, from 21 European countries, issued a document ‘Guidelines for Organisation of PhD Programmes in Biomedicine and Health Sciences‘.
- 2007. Third ORPHEUS conference was held in Helsinki. Participants from 43 universities from 26 European countries issued a document: ‘Helsinki Consensus Statement on PhD Training in Clinical Research’ (‘Helsinki Consensus Statement’) emphasizing the importance of PhD research in clinical medicine
- 2009. Fourth ORPHEUS conference was held in Aarhus with the main topic: Setting Standards for PhD Education in Biomedicine and Health Sciences.
- 2010. Fifth ORPHEUS 2010 Conference was held in Vienna is on the theme “The Advancement of European Biomedical and Health Science PhD Education by Cooperative Networking “.
- 2011. Sixth ORPHEUS 2011 Conference was held in Izmir with the main topic “PhD Quality Indicators for Biomedicine and Health Sciences“.
- 2012. Seventh ORPHEUS conference was held in Bergen with the main topic: “Establishing evaluation of PhD training”.
- 2013. Eight ORPHEUS conference was held in Prague with the main topic: “Towards International PhD Standards”.