Medical Psychology

The PhD Program in Medical Psychology focuses – following the biopsychosocial paradigm – on the interaction of psychological, physical and social factors with an individual’s health. Research areas covered by the PhD program include, for example, patient-reported outcome research, psychological treatment of patients with somatic diseases, sexual health, health services research, and psychoimmunology.

Students in this program will learn the skills and acquire the expertise necessary for conducting studies in the field of Medical Psychology. They will be trained in qualitative and quantitative research methods (including psychometrics and systematic approaches to guide the process of implementation of PRO-based health services in clinical care) and familiarized with different study types such as observational studies and clinical trials. Students will learn how to successfully master the full life cycle of a clinical study from planning the study, to its implementation, data analysis and dissemination of results.

The program is directed at students with a master’s level degree in psychology or a related field. Each student will be supervised by a faculty member and a PhD committee consisting of senior researchers. In addition, the students will be integrated in one of the research teams to provide the opportunity for close interaction with peers and senior researchers. Completion of the PhD program will allow to pursue a research career in academia or industry.

Lectures and Courses

The minimum study duration is 6 semesters. For the program 180 ETCS points are required. These are composed of 20 ECTS for curricular courses and 160 ECTS for the thesis.

The 20 ECTS for curricular courses are composed of core subjects (8-10 ECTS), seminars (6 ECTS) and general subjects (4-6 ECTS).

PhD program specific courses and seminars are offered in yearly intervals. Detailed information on core subjects and general subjects are provided by our Campus Information System i-med inside.

Link to i-med.inside»

  • Lecture series: Selected research areas in medical psychology
  • Patient-reported Outcomes: An introduction to the evaluation of medical treatments from the patients‘ perspective
  • Quantitative methods in medical psychology
  • Clinical Neurosciences II – Neuropsychology
  • Introduction to data analysis with R

Link to i-med.inside»

Seminars/Journal clubs credits  availability  information 
Aktuellen Studien aus der Patient-reported Outcome Forschung1 ECTSWSLV999084 Link (Giesinger)
Aktuellen Studien aus der Patient-reported Outcome Forschung2 ECTSSSLV 999584 Link (Lehmann)

Link to i-med.inside»

  • Ethics and misconduct in bio-medical science
  • Gender Medicine
  • Project application and management
  • Intellectual property, innovation and financial exploitation

Students

Name First nameYear of graduation

Faculty