Paracelsus Medical University

The Paracelsus Medical University (Paracelsus Medizinische Privatuniversität) is a private university with its seat in the city of Salzburg. It also has a second location in Nuremberg, Germany, where human medicine is taught in cooperation with Klinikum Nürnberg. Its legal entity is the Paracelsus Medical University Salzburg, a private foundation.

Money shapes how the place works. Financing comes mostly from private funds, with public funding from the province and city of Salzburg and the Salzburg Regional Authorities Association, plus tuition fees and income from research contracts and further education. As a private university it is not entitled to federal government funding. The university is tied to the University Hospital Salzburg (Landeskrankenhaus Salzburg) and the Christian Doppler Clinic, whose former departments became university clinic departments, with the move to university hospitals following in 2007. Partnerships exist with institutions including the Mayo Clinic School of Medicine, Yale, Cambridge, Johns Hopkins, the University of Milan and Dhulikhel Hospital in Nepal, and there is a network of academic teaching hospitals and practices in Salzburg and Bavaria.

Teaching covers human medicine (Bachelor and Master, with the academic title Dr. med. univ.), pharmacy, nursing science, public health, advanced nursing practice and several doctorate programmes. Research institutes and centres sit alongside this, with regenerative medicine as a main focus, and the research areas include neurosciences, oncological, immunological and allergic diseases, musculoskeletal diseases and metabolic diseases.

The national register lists 11 programmes of all kinds and languages for the institution. One of them is taught in English: a PhD or doctorate in Biomedical Science. The register category is Privatuniversität, and the type is private.

For an international student, the practical points are these. You apply directly to the university, which sets its own application period and entrance procedure. Students from outside the EU and EEA need a Residence Permit for Students. The tuition rules for public universities, no tuition for EU and EEA and Swiss students within the standard duration plus two semesters and a per-semester fee for most others, do not apply here, since this is a private university. Every student pays the student union fee.