Journal of Medical Education Development
Year:2016 | Volume:9 | Issue:22|Papers Count:13

Background and Objective: Bioethics is a multidisciplinary subject which has been of major significance to biotechnology researchers and related fields. The aim of this survey was to assess knowledge and attitudes of postgraduate students of Medical Faculty regarding bioethical issues.Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out among the postgraduate basic medical sciences students of Faculty of Medicine in Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran. A selfadministered questionnaire consisted of 42 questions was designed to assess knowledge and attitudes of postgraduate students on bioethical issues.Results: A total of 107 postgraduate students (out of 114), including 73 Master (MSc) and 34 Doctoral (PhD) students filled out the survey (93.8%). Only 17.6% of PhD students had a good knowledge of bioethics whereas none of the MSc students fell within this category. On average almost 68.5%of the respondents were familiar with the term "Bioethics". About 95.7% of MSc students reported that no academic courses were offered in bioethics whereas 54.5% of PhD students were able to take academic courses in the field. The results also showed that about 85 % of the respondents generally believed that it was necessary to increase their knowledge of bioethics.Conclusion: Although the postgraduate students were familiar with the term “Bioethics”, their awareness about bioethical issues was not very desirable. Results showed that the students had a high level of motivation for increasing their general knowledge in the field, so the necessity of designing appropriate courses on bioethics in university curricula should be reinforced.

Background and Objective: One of the main factors for the maintenance of each organization which leads to increasing its productivity is having organizational cultural consistency. Thus the purpose of this research was to study organizational culture of medical centers.Materials and Methods: In this descriptive-survey study, research population was all faculty members in Arak University of Medical Sciences that 176 people were selected using Cochran Formulate and stratified random sampling. Data was collected using organizational culture questionnaire with 42 items in four components (intellectual, development, consensus and hierarchical) in terms of Likert scale. Content and constructive validity of the questionnaire were confirmed and its reliability coefficient was calculated (0.84) using Cronbach Alpha. Data analysis was done through descriptive and inferential statistics by SPSS18 and Amos Graphic statistical software.Results: Findings showed that mean score of organizational culture in Arak University of Medical Sciences in intellectual component (3.4±0.57), development (3.33±0.56) and consensus (3.27±0.62) were higher than the average and hierarchical mean score (2.69±0.63) was lower than the average. Also there is no significant difference between faculty members' point of view on organizational culture in terms of gender, field of study, scientific rank, employment status and years of service.Conclusion: Faculty members believed that organizational culture was higher than intellectual, culture of development and consensus which in turn have more emphasis on innovation and development, risk-taking, efficiency and effectiveness and less emphasis on formalization, centralization, and rule and stability.

Background and objective: Breaking bad news is a very stressful task for both health professionals and patients. Teaching how to break bad news appropriately is one of the important concerns in medical education. So, this study aimed to compare role play and multimedia methods based on SPIKES strategy on midwifery students’ knowledge and attitude in breaking bad news to patients.Materials and Methods: A clinical trial study was done in three groups on 90 midwifery students in Mashhad University of Medical Sciences who were selected randomly. Students were trained by role play and multimedia methods. Control group had not received any intervention. Knowledge and attitude questionnaires were filled out before and two weeks after intervention.Results: Knowledge and attitude mean scores after intervention in the 3 groups had significant difference (P<0.05). Moreover, attitude score in multimedia group was higher than role play group and there was a significant difference between them (P=0.045).Conclusion: Multimedia as an independent and non-attendance program can increase students’ knowledge as same as the role play while, it can change students’ attitude more than the role play method.

Background and Objective: Mobile has provided a valuable teaching/learning opportunity for professors and students. Mobile electronic books are one of the educational resources that there is no defined plan for their usage at universities of medical sciences in Iran. This research aimed to evaluate mobile-based education for practical course of oral pathology.Materials and Methods: Oral pathology course was provided in the form of PowerPoint files and images and office suite was used to run these files.30 general dentistry students in their sixth semester were divided into two equal groups. At first stage, a group of students were taught traditionally and another group through their mobile phones. Then, an examination was conducted to evaluate the traditional teaching (classroom) and mlearning (mobile learning) in these two groups. At second stage, the two groups were replaced but the contents didn’t change. Afterwards, a re-evaluation of traditional teaching and m-learning was done. In the end, the effects of these two methods of teaching on students’ learning were compared using statistical methods.Results: Results showed that mobile-based teaching significantly affected students’ final scores (P<0.05) and mean scores of the two groups in mobile-based teaching were significantly higher than mean scores of the two groups in traditional teaching.Conclusion: Mobile-based teaching can be used as a teaching aid in traditional classroom educations.

Background and Objective: Background and goals of organizational health are the most obvious indicators of organizational effectiveness. There is committed, conscientious and helpful staff in healthy organizations that have high morale and performance. Managers’ awareness of organizational health can have an effective role in success and vitality of employees and officials. This study aimed to assess organizational health of educational system from the staff's point of view at Zanjan Medical Sciences University based on the pattern of Hoy and Feldman.Materials and Methods: This research was a descriptive and survey study which was a practical one regarding its goals. Research population was the staff of Zanjan University of Medical Sciences. A total of 147 employees as a sample size were selected. To collect data a 44-item questionnaire of organizational health written by Hoy and et al. (1996) was used. Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient was 0.86 and 0.89 in post-test and pre-test respectively. Validity of the questionnaire was confirmed. Moreover, SPSS22 was used to analyze data. To evaluate results, descriptive statistics and means analysis as well as Pearson correlation coefficient were calculated.Results: 84.8 percent of respondents assessed the organizational health as good. The highest mean score (87/19) was related to the faculty of medicine and the lowest mean score (67.49) was related to the faculty of pharmacy.Conclusion: The staff assessed the organizational health of educational system as good. However, educational system officials and lawmakers can play a significant role to promote the institutional and technical level of educational system in order to increase their efficiency.

Background and Objective: Educational ethics imply values such as honesty, reliance on one's own personal effort, not to abuse the efforts of others, and respect the dignity and respect for others. Students are faced with different situations in which they show various moral and immoral behaviors. This study aimed to explore medical students' viewpoints and experiences at Golestan University of Medical Sciences about ethics in academic environment in 2013.Materials and Methods: In this qualitative study a purposive sampling was used with maximum variation and 12 medical students participated in the research. Data was gathered using semi-structured interviews. At least an open question "When I say ethics in education or educational environment, what comes to your mind" was repeated in all the interviews. The interviews recorded and transcribed line by line and then analyzed according to "conventional content analysis" method.Results: "Respecting teacher dignity", "preserving dignity of classroom", "respecting and maintaining dignity for classmates", "seeking for knowledge and sciences” emerged as the main themes of the current study.Conclusion: University students considered learning environment as a sacred place; conforming its expected rules and ethics would be mandatory. Abnormal behavior causes not only loss of students dignity but also could be harmful to the calmness of educational atmosphere and may evoke different unpleasant pessimistic ideas about such academic environment.

Background and Objective: Considering cognitive load theory education strategies can lead to effective education. The purpose of this research was to study the impact of educational strategies of Cognitive Load Theory on extraneous cognitive load and learning in physiology course.Materials and Methods: In this study, a pretest-posttest design with a control group was used. Population of study consisted of all students at Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences who were studying physiology as an elective course in their second academic year 93-94. A convenience sampling was used to select 40 individuals and they randomly were assigned to two experimental and control groups (two groups of 20N).Research instruments were questionnaire of extraneous cognitive load and achievement test (pre-test and post-test with reliability of 89% and 87%, and their validity were approved by experts). The independent Ttest and SPSS software were used in analyzing data.Results: Results indicated a decrease in extraneous cognitive load and an increase in learning in the experimental group students in Physiology course, compared to the control group.Conclusion: Due to the impact of cognitive load theory instructional strategies on extraneous cognitive load and learning, using these strategies can lead to effective learning. Therefore, it is recommended to consider and apply these strategies in education.

Background and Objective: Assessment and evaluation of quality of education and performance of academic departments at universities are highly important. A common model to evaluate performance of an organization and its branches is Balanced Score Card. This study aimed to develop a model based on Balanced Score Card and Analytic Hierarchical Process in order to assess the performance of academic departments of Zanjan School of Pharmacy.Materials and Methods: In this descriptive study, 24 academic members of six departments of Zanjan Pharmacy School and 100 pharmacy students were surveyed. Data was gathered through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Collected data was organized by Excel and then weighted and analyzed using Expert Choice software version11 and SPSS 16.Results: According to results, in the learning environment, growth and development dimension with weighted score of 0.377, customer (0.345), process (0.158) and financial perspective (0.121) were ranked respectively. Pharmaceutics and food and drug control departments achieved highest performance respectively.Conclusion: Findings of this research could be used to provide and develop an appropriate combination of BSC and AHP techniques to give an image of four perspectives application of BSC in educational environment and in addition it can be used in planning and promoting the performance of similar educational systems by improving the quality of performance assessment and ranking.

Background and Objective: Several Studies indicate ascended scientific productivity of Iran in all academic fields including medical sciences universities. The aim of this study was to figure out scientific production by researchers of Zanjan University of Medical Sciences from March 2001 to March 2015.Materials and Methods: This research was a descriptive study in which data was collected by searching Web of Science, Medline, Scopus and Magirandatabases.Result: Results indicated that researchers of Zanjan University of Medical Sciences had published 449 articles in ISI, 289 in Pubmed, 773 in Scopus, 764 scientific articles in Magiran and 51 books during 2001-2015.Among all the faculties and research centers, School of Medicine was in the first place regarding article publication indexed in the 4 mentioned databases.Among the findings 94.3% of articles were original and 76.5% of books were compilations. Also, 59.1% of articles were written in English and 61% of articles were published in Iranian journals.Conclusion: The findings indicated that the status of article and book publication in ZUMS has had an ascending order from 2001 to 2015. The Faculty of Medicine indicated a great share in this regard.

Background and objective: Considering ethical issues in higher education and promoting academy members professional ethics can affect the dissemination of the culture of sharing knowledge, information, ideas and specialty. The purpose of this study was to survey and discover the mediating effect of professional ethics on the relationship between intellectual capital, organizational learning and knowledge sharing capabilities.Materials and Methods: The current study was a descriptive- correlative research. Statistical population included all 171 faculty members of Ilam University of Medical Sciences that 125 of whom were selected through stratified random sampling method based on Morgan table. Data was gathered through professional ethics, organizational learning capability, knowledge sharing, and intellectual capital questionnaires. To investigate the relationship between the variables in a conceptual model, the structural equation modeling was used.Results: Results showed that the relationship between intellectual capital and knowledge sharing was mediated through professional ethics. But the mediating role of professional ethics in the relationship between intellectual capital and learning capability was not confirmed. The results also showed that the highest significant correlation was achieved in the relationship between intellectual capital and learning capability. In the considered model, all regression weights, except for the relationship between professional ethics and organizational learning capability, were statistically significant.Conclusion: Considering the principles of professional ethics and managing and developing intellectual capital at universities, which are expected to be at the center of knowledge creation, can be of great importance in promoting the culture of knowledge sharing among faculty members.

Background and objective: The main purpose of this article was a review of students' computer literacy level who were studying through distance education at University of Tehran, Faculty of Management.Materials and Methods: This study was a descriptive-survey research in which 171 students were selected.Research instrument was a questionnaire of computer literacy based on standards of ICDL. The reliability index for the total test was 0.70.Result: Components of Information Technology; Windows; Word; PowerPoint; Excel and Access were relatively at a desirable level. Component of Internet was the only one at a desirable level. Also, general computer literacy skills were relatively at a desirable level.Conclusion: One of the most important technical skills in the system of distance education is computer literacy skill. Having this skill will contribute to access information and knowledge. Therefore, planning to teach computer literacy skills is essential in medical and non-medical sciences universities.

Background and Objective: One of the most important factors in education process is establishing communication between students and their professors. Effective education except scientific skills, needs using effective communication methods in educational environments. This can be done by recognizing effective factors in establishing communication. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify M.A and PhD students' point of view regarding effective factors in establishing communication between students and faculty members.Materials and Methods: In this descriptive- cross sectional study, M.A and PhD students of Allied Health Faculty of Tehran University of Medical Sciences were surveyed. Data gathering tool consisted of two parts; demographic data and 28 questions related to the assessment of effective factors in establishing communication between students and faculty members. The questionnaire was a four point scale ranging from "very effective" to "having no effect". Data was analyzed by SPSS 18.ed software, using descriptive statistical methods, frequency distribution, determining percentage and the group comparison was made by chi2.Results: The most effective factors according to students' viewpoint were, respect for students (86.3%), being up to date (78.4%), rhetoric and teaching skills (71%) and secrecy (71%) in establishing communication between students and their professors. Meanwhile, sex, age gap, stringency and professors' appearance were not so crucial in establishing communication.Conclusion: The result of this study showed that personal factors like rhetoric and teaching skills, behavioral characteristics such as respecting students in comparison with other factors like scientific skills and professional features are more effective in establishing communication.

Background and Objective: Inappropriate behaviors in academic environments can strongly disturb both teaching and learning processes and make conflict and anxiety between instructor and student. The main objective of this study was to investigate students' attitude on inappropriate behaviors in academic environments.Materials and Methods: This research was a cross-sectional descriptive study conducted in 2012. A questionnaire was designed by the researcher and all students of Faculty of Dentistry voluntarily participated.Data was analyzed using SPSS18 software, descriptive, independent T, ANOVA, and Spearman’s correlation coefficient; P≤0.05 was considered significant.Results: Results of this study indicated that the majority of students considered sleeping in class as an inappropriate behavior, while checking the time at the end of class was the most common behavior which was reported by them. A significant relationship was observed between students’ perspective on inappropriate behaviors and the manner they did them; as Spearman statistical test indicated a high correlation between their perspective and frequency of inappropriate behaviors (R=0.55 and P=0.0001).Conclusion: Findings indicated that the majority of students had a negative attitude towards inappropriate behaviors. Besides, the frequency of doing these behaviors cannot be justified by this research team.Regarding the negative effects of inappropriate behaviors on education process, it is recommended to take some actions for cherishing instructors and students in academic environments.