Iranian Journal of Medical Education
Year:2012 | Volume:11 | Issue:6 (35)|Papers Count:14

Introduction: Parthnership in clinical education is a duty for all those involved in providing health care. Nurses’ involvement in clinical education can reduce the gap between theory and practice. This study aimed to identify the mechanisms used by nursing educators to attract staff nurses’ parthnership in the delivery of clinical education.Methods: This is a qualitative content analysis study performed in year 2009. Fifteen nursing clinical educators, staff nurses, educational managers, and nurse managers of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences and Tehran University of Medical Sciences participated in this study. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews. Primarily, purposeful sampling was performed and continued using snowballing method and continued until data saturation. All interviews were recorded and subsequently transcribed. The analysis was carried out by qualitative content analysis method.Results: Six themes were discovered through rich and deep descriptions by participants. These include acquiring skillfulness supremacy, being realistic, commitment and responsibility, modesty, using other nurses’ experiences, and assertiveness.Conclusion: Nursing educators use their special approaches to make effective and appropriate personal and professional relationships with clinical nurses and transfer their experiences to the students. These personal mechanisms should be systematically supported through incorporation within organizational programs shared by academic and clinical institutes. This will enhance the efficacy of nursing educators in accomplishing their clinical role.

Introduction: Peer teaching/learning is an effective educational intervention for students of health sciences in clinical settings. This study explores facilitators and barriers in application of this method in clinical settings.Methods: It is a content analysis qualitative study in which the focus group discussion is used for data gathering. Two groups of nursing students (n=15) of Bushehr University of Medical Sciences who were trained through peer education in pediatric or neonatal wards in year 2009, explained about how they experienced peer learning.Results: Analysis of interviews revealed 3 categories of facilitators including type of the job and workload, educational role of the instructor, and students’ characteristics. Also three categories of tension in working environment, trivial supervision of instructor, and competitive performance of students were identified as learning barriers in this method.Conclusion: It may be recommended that teachers brief this method to the students and then start using the method with low workload and less stress to the students and finally keep an eye over its implementation process. Further study in this domain by experts of different fields is recommended.

Introduction: Medical students face with extreme amount of curriculum materials which can't be simply memorized, so different ways of learning have always been emphasized. The goal of this study was to investigate learning styles and related factors among medical students of Birjand University of Medical Sciences using VARK questionnaire.Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study. In 2009-2010 academic year, 148 medical students from different stages of medical school were selected by stratified random sampling. The learning styles of Data gathering tool was VARK questionnaire in which learning styles were classified into four subclasses of visual, audio, reading, and kinetic (skill). Data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics.Results: Among 148 people participating in this study 77% were female and most of them (66.2%) were passing the basic sciences stage. The learning style mostly used by these students was auditory (48.6). There was no significant relationship between the preferred learning styles and gender (P=0.18).Conclusion: Considering the fact that students are educated through lecture and oral methods from elementary to university, it would be expected that students prefer auditory learning style to others. Despite the practical outbreak of medical students in clinical settings, increasing students’ ability in kinetic methods seems to be necessary.

Introduction: Among medication errors, intravenous medication administration errors are especially important. The lack of medication information can be one of the causes of medication errors. Using electronic education may facilitate quick access to the update resources. The objective of this study is the evaluation of an appropriate educational strategy to reduce intravenous drug administration errors by staff, including error in drug dosage, before-, during- and after- prescription assessment, evaluation of injection site, proper solvent selection, volume of solvent, length of injection, and patient training.Methods: This is a single group interventional study, carried out in three hospital wards of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences in 2008-9. Samples were intravenous drugs prescribed by nursing staff. Intravenous administrations was observed and recorded before and 6 months after the educational intervention. Educational intervention for all nursing staff responsible for drug administration, was a workshop composed of a blend of lectures, practice, reflection and E-learning opportunities on medication errors and resources. Data analysis was done with MC-Nemar and binomial tests.Results: In this study, evaluations of errors in 603 administrations of intravenous medication (30 drugs) have been done regarding ten variables. After education, there was a decreased frequency of errors in before prescription assessment (60.5% to 6.6%), evaluation of injection site (25.3% to 3.4%), length of injection (50.1% to 27.6%), during prescription assessment (42.7% to 16.7), after prescription assessment (42.3% to 17.2%) and patient training (91.2% to 75.6%) (P<0.05).Conclusion: The use of modern strategies and introducing rsources (electronic data bases and sofwares) in hospital wards is important in decreasing medication errors, as it facilitates the nurses’ access to the update sources of medication information.

Introduction: Appraising the factors affecting the choice of nursing major may help to identify and improve incentives for choosing this profession. This study is an endeavor to determine factors affecting the choice of discipline among newly admitted nursing students of Kerman University of Medical Sciences.Methods: In this descriptive cross sectional study, all newly admitted nursing students in Kerman University of Medical Sciences were entered into study through census (n=82). Data gathering tool was a questionnaire made by researcher. Data was analyzed using independent t test, paired t test, and repeated measure ANOVA.Results: According to the students, the most effective reason for choosing nursing was “eager to help people” and the least effective one was “having experience of health care before education”. Personal and professional factors were the foremost reason for choosing this discipline. Comparing the effect of three domains of personal (61.67%), environmental (38%), and professional (62.33%) on choosing the discipline revealed a significant statistical difference (p<0.001).Conclusion: Students’ parallel attention to personal and professional factors in choosing the discipline compared to trivial effect of environmental factors, implies that volunteers have considered their own interests and the characteristics of the profession rather than external (improper) factors. The extensive effect of professional factors shows that it is possible to attract more interested and motivated students to this discipline via the modification of these factors.

Introduction: The most important causes for mortality rate and poor quality of life in patients with heart failure arise from insufficient and inappropriate self-care. This study determines the effect of an educational self- care program on knowledge and performance in patients with heart failure.Methods: This quazi-experimental study included 80 patients with heart failure hospitalized in Kerman University hospitals. Patients were randomly assigned to experimental (n=40) and control (n=40) groups. First, background demographic, knowledge and performance data were collected through interview and observation, by a researcher made questionnaire. Then the patients in experiment group received 4 educational sessions each lasting twenty minutes during the hospital stay, and also were given an educational booklet review, while control patients received routine care. Data on all patients’ knowledge and performance was again collected at one month after discharge. The knowledge and performance of two groups were compared using Wilcoxon and Mann-Whitney U tests.Results: There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups in self-care knowledge and performance before intervention. One month after discharge, patients from both groups reported better self care knowledge and performance compared with their baseline, but patients from experimental group reported a significantly more increase in self-care knowledge and performance than patients from the control group (increase in knowledge score= 18.81 vs. 1.81; z=7.56, p<0.0001, in performance score=29.50 vs. 0.43; z=7.31, p 0.0001).Conclusion: This study demonstrated that the application of an instructional self-care program raises the awareness and improves the performance of the patients with heart failure.

Introduction: Patient education and his/her partnership during hospitalization and at discharge time is essential. The aim of this study is to describe nurses’ experiences of barriers and facilitators of patient education in year 2008 at Shariati Hospital in Tehran (SHT).Methods: The present study is a triangulation research with three steps Delphi method. Participants included 25 nursing staff (1 matron, 8 supervisors, 8 head nurses and 8 nurses). Data were collected in the nursing office and different wards. Data collection methods were an unstructured interview, followed by a questionnaire from interviews, and in the third step, focused groups.Results: Mean and Standard deviation of age and working experience of participants were 42.20±6.14 and 14.84±6.20 years, respectively. Most important barriers according to the third step were: nurses’ low scientific knowledge and information, shortage of nursing manpower, excessive workload, manner of clinical supervision and feedback, and extra tasks demanded due to working in a teaching hospital. The most important facilitators were found to be: developing patient education protocols for each ward, according to needs assessment, revision in supervision and feedback system, establishing a good relationship between patients and nurses and physicians, assigning a rotating nurse for patient education, and running educational courses for nurses as a part of their duty time.Conclusion: The described barriers and facilitators for patient education have a multidimensional nature. Therefore, it may be suggested that authorities should undertake systematic and comprehensive measures to provide facilities and opportunities for programs on patient education and self-care programs based on their needs in clinic.

Introduction: many studies have been conducted regarding the settings of clinical medical education and its problems, but clinical learning experiences of medical students are less studied as a whole. The aim of this study was to explore, describe and interpret medical students' perception about clinical learning in order to obtain a deep insight about their clinical learning experience.Methods: This study was conducted on phenomenological approach. Two focus groups of 20 students were hold. Data gathering continued until saturation. Transcriptions were analyzed using the Van Manen procedures.Results: Data were categorized into 11 themes: nature of clinical learning, not belonging to medical team, program-induced anxiety, communication between learner and teacher, variety of contexts and resources for clinical learning, putting potential abilities into action, discovery of self in clinical setting, conflict between work and learning, dependency, and lack of prospectus in clinical learning.Conclusion: Although, clinical learning is a complex phenomenon, this study discovered its main aspects and elements. Findings implied that clinical learning directs students toward medical professionalism. Application of results and conducting more research about discovered themes in order to assess problems are recommended.

Introduction: There are many studies about evaluation in nursing education and its problems in Iran, but no study has been reported on the requirements for effective evaluation. This study aimed to explore academic managers' perceptions about requirements for effective evaluation in nursing education in Iran.Methods: This qualitative study was performed in year 2010. Semistructured individual interviews were arranged for 21 academic nursing managers and experts. The interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The transcriptions were analyzed using content analysis method.Results: Requirements for effective evaluation emerged in three categories and each category included some themes: input issues (infrastructure requirements, consideration of appropriate evaluation policies and approaches, revision of evaluation tools, consideration of students admission criteria, continuous assessment of students, teachers’ competence, comprehensive evaluation of curricula); process issues (standardization of objectives, revision of evaluation tools, establishment of follow-up committees, improvement of evaluators’ conditions, consideration of stakeholders’ expectations, and improvement in evaluation of theoretical and clinical training), and output issues (effective evaluation of students’ academic achievement, maintaining contact with alumni, alumni competence, continuing education for alumni, academic progress of alumni, awareness of occupational situation, work licensure, and graduates’ impact on society).Conclusion: There are numerous requirements for making nursing evaluations effective. Providing these requirements in the three categories of educational inputs, processes and outputs may improve the effectiveness of current evaluations. Also further studies are essential to design an efficient evaluation system for nursing education.

Introduction: Application of information technology in educational systems is an active program and educational process, which illustrates modern education in the third millennium. Meanwhile, prior to its application, there should be an effort to identify the effective factors on the acceptance, efficiency, utilization and use of this phenomenon. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the factors affecting the acceptance of electronic learning based on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) among students of Tehran University of Medical Sciences.Methods: This research is a descriptive study which includes all the students studying in year 2010 in Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Using simple random sampling 321 students were selected for the study. Data collection tool was a questionnaire (developed by the researcher based on Technology Acceptance Model). Its reliability was 0 .81. Data analysis included both descriptive statistics (by SPSS) and inferential statistics through structural equation modeling and path analysis using LISREL.Results: Variables including the perception of easy usage of e-learning, the perception of the helpfulness of e-learning, students’ attitudes toward e-learning and the decision to use it are the factors which affect the acceptance and use of this technology positively at the level of 0.01 among the students.Conclusion: Based on the data analysis, the TAM of electronic learning in this population is appropriate based on the goodness of fit. Consequently it is applicable to the population under study.