The Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree is primarily for Otago medical graduates who have completed published original research in any branch of medical science. The academic standard is equivalent to Doctor of Science (DSc).
The MD is an unsupervised degree based on published original contributions of special excellence in a branch of medical science. It is a higher doctoral degree similar to the Doctor of Science (DSc), Doctor of Dental Science (DDSc) and Doctor of Laws (LLD) degrees. Medical graduates who do not have experience of research and/or who require supervision are advised to consider a supervised degree such as Master of Medical Science (MMedSc) or PhD.
To be eligible to apply for admission to the Otago MD the applicant must be:
a medical graduate from the University of Otago, or
a medical graduate from another University who has completed a substantial proportion of the work to be presented while working in a department of the University, and
have held their medical degree for at least five years.
Applicants are advised to contact the Faculty Manager to confirm their eligibility for admission.
The collection of works to be included in the submission for the degree must consist of material that reports original research contributions by the candidate and is based on the candidate’s own observations, activities, experiments and investigations. The candidate must give evidence that he or she has carried out independent research that makes an original contribution to knowledge. Compilation from the work of others will not be accepted. In this regard, candidates are required to sign a statutory declaration identifying the submitted work as original and their own. Where co-authored work is submitted, those parts which are a candidate’s own work are required to be identified clearly, and the contribution provided by the candidate must be stated specifically.
Similarly to the University’s other higher doctoral degrees (eg: DSc, DDSc and LLD), the work presented for the MD is expected to be of special excellence.
