Perception of medical students participated in community-oriented medical education in Kermanshah (2007-2011)

Physicians have a fundamental role in the health system. Therefore, investigation of different medical education approaches would have a major impact on improving the quality of education. The aim of this study was investigating the performance of community-based education center of Kermanshah from the viewpoint of medical interns. In this cross sectional analytic study, medical interns who were trained in community-oriented education center (n=175) over one month were enrolled and completed the researcher built questionnaire. Alpha reliability was 0.88 and its content validity was confirmed by the approval of five faculty members who were expert in the field of education. Data was analyzed by SPSS software and using of descriptive statistics, ANOVA and Friedman tests. Based on the viewpoint of our participants, community oriented education were desirable compare to education in hospital in terms of quality of education (42/4%), experienced of practical tips (48/3%), observing different cases (57/2%), preventive medicine education (55/6%)and time for communicating about patient (74%). Among reasons of difference between training in the COME center compare to teaching hospitals, "possibility of learning of practical tips" was considered more important than other reasons (P<0.05). In this study, most participants have evaluated the training performance of the COME center as good and also more useful compared to training in teaching hospitals. Reinforcing of COME centers could be a priority in making future educational policies.