Iranian Journal of Medical Education
Year:2000 | Volume:1 | Issue:1 (1)|Papers Count:10

The more clearly the clinician comprehends the processes of clinical perception and of linking the experience with explanation, the more thoughtfully clinical students can be guided to construct an accurate clinical memory of cases, and to construct a sound working knowledge structure from their personal examined experience. The structuring of the steps of clinical learning is intended as a check list to optimise their coverage, and as a framework for examining and codifying clinical working knowledge within which continuing education can be conducted.

According to the modem management, quality is defined from the view of customers. In health services, quality improvement requires appropriate measures to increase responsiveness and accountability of health system to increasing demands of the community. Regarding the ever-changing nature of health services protocols, there is no way but development and improvement of a CME system to make health service providers up to date. Different dimensions of health system quality and the key role of CME in quality improvement are discussed. Also, CME is introduced as an appropriate mean for quality improvement.

Introduction: Medical education in Iran has four stages: Basic Medical Science (BMS), Pathophysiology, Clinical Clerkship, and Internship. The relevance of basic medical course contents to professional practice needs is considered to be a problem in such traditional curriculum. Also, diminished retention of the content is another problem. These two problems are explored in this study. Methods: One of the national comprehensive BMS exams was given to interns. The, participants previous score in a similar (but not identical) exam was assumed as the previous knowledge state. Their attitude toward clinical relevance of each question and different BMS courses were assessed using statements with five point Likert scale.Results: 70% of participants claimed that they filled questionnaires precisely. Mean of scores in the present exam was 25% less than the previous one (four year interval). Mean scores for clinical relevance of exam items was 3.7 out of 5.Knowledge scores didn't correlate with demographic variables. Present knowledge scores were directly correlated to the previous exam score and interns average. Score for clinical relevance of a given exam item did not correlate with the knowledge score about it. Maximum knowledge scores were for questions of Health, Histology, and Pathology. The highest scores of clinical relevance were for questions of Nutrition, Health, Physiology, Pathology, Bacteriology, Parasitology, and English language. The highest scores of clinical application were for Nutrition, Health and Physiology. There was a miss-match between interns view about clinical relevance of some BMS courses (Genetics and Medical Physics) and clinical application of their exam items.Conclusions: The causes of 25% decline in knowledge retention should be explored more. The observed miss-match between clinical relevance of some BMS courses and clinical application of exam items as well as knowledge scores suggests that BMS course contents and exams should be revised according to professional practice needs.

Introduction: Clinical education environment is unfamiliar to students, comparing to previous learning environments. It seems that designing a program to match actual needs of students for adopting to this new environment may lead to more cooperation of them and improve educational outcomes: Method: learning needs for such a course were assessed according to viewpoints of both medical students in the first year of clinical clerkship and expert clinical teachers. The L course was implemented as a two-day seminar, and the attitudes and outcomes were measured with a self-administered questionnaire.Findings: Although the course was optional for the students, the majority of students participated in it to the end. Most of them claimed that the program was useful and essential in improving their activities and knowledge.Discussion: Regarding the active participation of students during designing process and implementation of this course and their satisfaction of participation, it seems that this program helped those students who are to enter clinical clerkship, yet more specialized courses are felt needed. Coordination of all authorities who are responsible for clinical education in designing a complete course of clinical introduction is essential.

Introduction: It is essential to familiarize students with the university environment and let them reach to a level of attitude, knowledge and skill to be able to function actively in a student-centered manner. A workshop was designed for new medical students, in collaboration with senior students and office of vice-chancellor for education. The workshop was held during the third month of studying medicine in the January 1998. Methods: The program contained: introduction to medicine courses, different approaches to studying medicine including basic sciences, introduction to university and academic organization, methods of using library and scientific sources, interrelationship with senior student, strengthening responsibility moods. The workshop consisted of teamwork and general discussion sessions. Also, they were asked to answer the question that how should they attempt to become an informed and successful physician in the future.Results: Over 90 percent of participants were satisfied with their attendance in the workshop. Also, they demanded the continuation of running such workshops in different stages of their study years. The students estimated now -a-day medical education far from acceptable and optimal situation.Conclusions: It seems that assessing and meeting student's needs, especially in the first year of their study is very essential. Also, trying to find the causes of gradual frustration of medical students requires organized action by the educational authorities. Students themselves are considered as a strong, open minded and creative source of knowledge for solving their own problems. Performing such workshop by itself met some needs of medical students.

Introduction: University students are faced with a lot of stresses such as workload, maltreatment, etc. They cope with these problems differently. The coping may be manifested as depression, anxiety, changing life style, etc., which will affect their educational performance and sometimes causes dropout. To prevent this loss, it is essential to understand the phenomenon of dropout and find the causes and decrease or remove them.Methods: The population of study was students referring to the University Counseling Center during 1998. They came either voluntarily or in response to invitation. Invitations were made for those who had been known as high-risk students according to the screening study of entering year (1996, 1997). The intervention was counseling for psychological, educational, familial, and social problems. The effectiveness of intervention was assessed by comparison of the students' average grade before and after that.Results: The mean of average grades increased after intervention. This was more prominent in three groups: students with higher average grades from high school, students with university averages below 14 (out of 20), and not married students.Conclusions: This study was a part of a university project for prevention of dropout .As previous researches showed, it may be concluded that taking care of students, and counseling their problems may result in less dropout and improve their achievement. To apply this, establishing a Student Health Center with counseling supports is recommended.

Introduction: The relationship between students learning styles and their preferred teaching methods has been considered in recent years. This relationship was explored in the present study. Methods: This is a descriptive-analytic study. A stratified sample of nursing students out of all grades participated in it. Students learning styles were explored with the Kolb's questionnaire for learning style. Their preferred teaching methods were determined using another questionnaire. Results: A correlation between learning styles and some preferred teaching methods was observed for theoretical courses. There was not such correlation in for practical courses. Conclusions: Considering students learning styles may help university teachers to choose more appropriate teaching methods.

Introduction: Regarding the importance of student-centered learning in postgraduate courses, we decided to design and perform a problem-based learning (PBL) method and evaluate it in the epidemiology and research methods course in M.P.H program. Methods: This is a one-group study. Participants were oriented about course objectives and divided in groups of three. Course duration was 34 two-hour sessions. Fourteen problems were given to the groups to be discussed. The results of discussions were presented in large group. Students' attitudes about the course was gathered using 19 questions by means of 5 point Likert scale and two open questions.Results: Observations confirmed participants' interest to the new learning method by doing their exercises on time. Attitude assessment showed that the mean of student scores j was between 79.4 and 86 out of 100. The mean and standard deviation of satisfaction score about the new method of teaching were 18+ 1.2 out of 20. Conclusions: Considering the success of this course, it is worthwhile to try this learning method in similar courses for postgraduate students.

Introduction: In recent years, professional development of teachers has become an important issue in educational system. The question of work has been the kind of supervision needed to save and secure teachers successful performance in his/her teaching career. The present study aimed at answering this question. Methods: The study was preformed in two phases: At first a quasi-experiment on 372 randomly selected students was done. The exposed group's teachers were under clinical supervision. In the second phase, the clinical supervision method was evaluated based on opinions of 50 faculties and educational authorities. Results: In the exposed group, the rate of students learning proved to be significantly higher (P<0.001). Those students evaluated their teachers professional behaviors as more positive compared to teacher evaluations made by students in the control group (P<0.001). Full agreement and agreement to perform clinical supervision were expressed by 62.5 percent of respondents in the second phase study, whereas 91.7 percent of the same attitude was found toward self -evaluation (The latter was expressed as one of the best solutions .for quality problems of teaching). The majority of respondents insisted on maintaining stable environment for teaching, a decrease in number of students and proper teacher selection methods as the other solutions.Conclusions: Applying clinical supervision method had a positive effect on students learning and teachers' performance. Thus this method should be considered as one of the basic ways to develop educational system in the field of medical sciences.