Educational services quality; distance between current and desirable situations

One of the main challenges which should be attended by Medical Universities is establishing a coherent system in order to give desirable services and using strategic methods to enhance service quality. The present study was conducted aiming at evaluating and determining the gap of the quality of educational service provided for nursing students of Urmia University of Medical Sciences using SERVQUAL scale. This descriptive and survey was undertaken on 328 nursing students of Urmia University of Medical Sciences and 73 students were selected using simple random sampling. Data was collected through standard SERVQUAL questionnaire including five dimensions of physical, guarantee, responsibility, reliability and empathy. Data analysis was done by SPSS 16 using descriptive statistics, single-variable T Test and correlated Paired two-sample T-test. In students’ viewpoint, the mean of the general educational services quality was 2.68 ± 0.75 and the scores of each of five dimensions including physical, reliability, responsibility, guarantee, and empathy were 2.79 ±0.83, 2.75±0.85, 2.52±0.89, 2.75±0.90 and 2.59±0.97, respectively and each was significant in terms of within-group factor. Considering the available and desirable scores of each dimension, the general educational services quality and five dimensions were far from the favorable condition (p=0.001). Students are not satisfied with the quality of the educational services provided by Urmia University of Medical Sciences and the gap between the existing situation and desirable one are deep in all five dimensions.