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Responsibility for doctoral students

Since the doctoral regulations published on 31.03.2021 came into force, doctoral candidates for the Dr. med. or Dr. med. dent. at the Medical Faculty of the University of Cologne are no longer required to apply for purely retrospective research projects on humans. 
Please note, however, that the amendment to § Section 15 of the Professional Code of Conduct for North Rhine physicians (entered into force on July 23, 2025) also affects purely retrospective research projects. These are no longer exempt from the consultation obligation.

The vote of the responsible ethics committee is often required for a planned publication. We would ask you to take this into account when planning your project.
Note: We would ask you to submit doctoral projects integrated into large projects/joint projects and not to submit an application for each individual project. This can reduce the bureaucratic effort and processing time.

For medical research projects, the doctoral regulations require consultation with the ethics committee. If this research project has already been approved by the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Cologne, it is not necessary for the doctoral candidate to resubmit it to the Ethics Committee, provided that the doctoral project does not go beyond the approved research project or deviate significantly from it.

Research on humans includes research on living humans and on the bodies of deceased persons, on human biomaterial and on human data.

Legal necessity:
Persons (e.g. doctoral candidates at our faculty) who work scientifically in institutions (external or university hospital) must be legally protected. This concerns areas such as data protection, copyright, medical confidentiality and regulations on the authority to issue instructions. At the University Hospital of Cologne, legal protection is provided by the Human Resources Department and is regulated by an internship contract without incurring any personnel costs.

Recommendation of the Dean's Office:
Urgent reference is made to the fundamental necessity of contractual employment and professional law protection for scientific activities, such as doctorates, especially in the case of research on humans and interdisciplinary cooperation. This should cover the entire duration of the academic activity (this also includes the writing of academic publications (e.g. dissertation).