Journal of Medical Education for Future Demands
Year:2009 | Volume:13 | Issue:3|Papers Count:8

Background and purpose: The characteristics of residents of infectious diseases who should practice and teach evidence based medicine (EBM) during their clinical work – and their attitudes toward it-are poorly known. We assessed the knowledge, attitude and practice of infectious diseases residents regarding evidence based medicine and their related educational needs.Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted during February 2007. Residents of infectious diseases from Shahid Beheshti medical university received a self-administered questionnaire and all of them participated in the study. Their attitude on EBM, their ability to access online resources, and their understanding of relevant terminology were assessed.Results: Thirty four residents responded and returned the questionnaire. Most respondents showed welcoming attitude towards EBM. The median value for the estimated percentage of the residents' clinical practice that was evidence based was 50%. Only one had received training in EBM and none was educated about critical appraisal. The median number of Medline search for management of patients was 4 times in the last year and most residents were even unaware of EBM resources. Although more than 80% had some understanding about terms like relative risk and odds ratio, the understanding was less than 50% for technical terms such as systematic review and meta-analysis.Conclusions: We recommend that university teaching programs should promote and incorporate EBM training in all levels of medical education.

Background and purpose: Medical education is a complex process that intends to train the students in situation like they should work in future such as hospital, clinics, health care center and theire oficess.So, first, it should be clear that, how much the curriculum of medical education meets the professional needs.Method: Questionnaires were designed and distributed among 125 physicians (GP) with one to tow years experience. The questionnaire scaled from 1 to 10 (at least relevance to the most relevance).Results: General practitioners graded the relevancy of content of medical curriculum to professional needs as 7.03±1.56. They mentioned that the ratio of ambulatory medical education to bedside one was nearly 2.5 to 1. Approximately 73% of them pointed that their needs to ambulatory education were fulfilled: low and very low. Whereas 71% of them mentioned that the amount of fulfillment of bed side education were: enough and very enough.Conclusion: This study showed that the contents of medical curriculum are not completely relevant to GP needs, especialy in basic science. The recommendation is that there needs to be a shift in the emphasis from hospital to the community, and particularly to ambulatory centers.

Background: Assessment forms the backbone of undergraduate medical training especially in clinical contexts and clerkships, which are typically situated in environments lacking educational structure. This study aims to evaluate the viewpoints of medical interns in internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology wards about feedback and formative assessment.Methods: 100 medical interns attending internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology wards comprised the subjects of the study. They filled out a questionnaire containing 20 items on formative assessment.The data obtained were analyzed, using SPSS version 14.Results: Among the wards studied the obstetrics & gynecology achieved the highest score and the surgery ward the lowest. The difference between the scores was statistically significant (P=0.007) Conclusion: The highest score to formative assessment in the obstetrics & gynecology ward reveals the students’ more positive viewpoints on formative assessment in this ward in comparison to the other three major wards. The surgery ward received the lowest score suggesting that the feedback in surgery ward was very low.

Background: Objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) is one of the most preferable means of evaluating cognitive, emotional and psychomotor aspects of nursing students. The present study was designed to determine the reliability and validity of OSCE in evaluating clinical skills of nursing students.Materials and methods: For this descriptive evaluative study, 10 different skills of nursing students were selected. Then, 37 students performed these skills at 10 different OSCE stations, during which two experienced inspectors evaluated their performance. Finally, the correlation between OSCE scores and the mean theoretical and clinical performance scores of students was calculated. Meanwhile, the correlation between the total OSCE scores whit OSCE score of each station was determined. Inspector’s reliability (correlation between scores reported by inspectors at each station) was also calculated.Results: The correlation coefficient of OSCE scores and mean theoretical and clinical performance scores were 0.38 (p=0.031) and 0.52 (p=0.005), respectively. Correlation coefficient of inspectors' reliability was in a range of 0.38-0.95.Conclusion: OSCE in strongly suggested as a reliable and valid means of evaluating nursing students’clinical skills.

Background and purpose: In education, planning is necessary and inevitable. This study was conducted to identify knowledge and attitude of faculty members of Kerman University of medical science about lesson planning.Methods: In this cross- sectional study the sample was all of the faculty members of Kerman medical university (320 persons). Data collected by a researcher-made questionnaire which its validity and reliability were already confirmed.Results: The result showed that faculty members got 53% total score of attitude; 31.96% got more than 75% of attitude score. They got a mean of 47% of knowledge score. Only 18.56% of faculty members got more than 75% of knowledge total score. The highest score of knowledge belonged to “educational goals domain” (75%) that obtained by 59.45% of participants, while the lowest score belonged to “teaching method”, so that 5.15% of respondents got more than 75% of total score of knowledge in this domain.There was a significant difference between the lecturers’ attitude based on the faculty where they taught (p=0.002), so that the medical faculty members got highest score of attitude. There was a significant statistically difference on level of knowledge score based on academic rank (p=0.023), so that the mentors knowledge score was more than other respondents.Conclusion: The findings showed the academic members’ knowledge was not in satisfactory level and they had not positive attitude about providing lesson plan. It is because the majority of academic members have not participated in any formal education course or workshop or the former workshops on lesson planning in order to increasing of level knowledge and change of faculty members’ attitude was not successful. Therefore it is an essential for educational management to have a serious review to implement these programs.

Background: Assessment of educational courses has a critical impact on quality improvement in all curricula. Surveys aimed at alumni and graduating students may be useful for the evaluation of the program outcomes and revision. The aims of this study were to describe levels of competency of last year students of an Iranian dental school in the major skills needed for a new dentist and to investigate its relationship with background factors such as gender, marriage status, entrance exam score, entrance quotas and their economic status.Methods: In this cross-sectional descriptive analytic study, 55 last year dental students filled out a valid and reliable questionnaire including demographic characteristics and 132 competencies that could be rated on a four point Likert’s Scale. The data were analyzed by one-way ANOVA, independent-samples ttest and Pearson correlation coefficient.Results: Students' total competencies mean score was 47.48±2.03 out of 100. The lowest and highest score belonged to oral diseases diagnosis (%18.48) and Preventive dentistry (%66.06) respectively. The past dental hygiene students continued their education as a doctoral degree were more competent than the others but there were no significant differences between competency levels of other quotas. The competency score had no significant relationship with marriage and economic statuses of students as well as their entrance exam score.Conclusion: responses to the students’ self-reported preparedness described the general state of competency of the last year dental students as fairly satisfactory. However, the theoretical backgrounds related to some subjects need to be more emphasized.

Emotional intelligence is a different way of being smart and it is the ability to understand and recognize emotional status and managing emotions, which promotes productivity, proper social relations and makes good decision in life. There are growing reports of the integration of emotional intelligence in medical practice, so the purpose of this paper is a literature review related to emotional intelligence and its role in medical education.

A well structured curriculum to support students, optimize experiential learning and facilitate competency in the skills needed for effective clinical practice is a prerequisite for every ward of a teaching hospital. Thus we have developed a new guideline for education of endocrinology in hospitals affiliated to Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.