Factors affecting quality of education from the viewpoint of graduated nurses working in Birjand hospitals, 2012

Promoted quality of nursing education brings about improved quality of nursing care. Survey from graduates can facilitate the way to plan and modify current educational methods. This study aimed to determine the factors affecting the quality of education from the viewpoint of nurses working in Birjand hospitals. This descriptive study involved 115 nurses working in Birjand hospitals during 2011-12 academic year who were selected through quota sampling method. The data collection tool consisted of a self-made questionnaire consisting of two parts: a) demographic characteristics and b) viewpoints of graduate nurses about the influence of various factors on the quality of education in 5 domains and 32 items. Content validity and inter-item correlation coefficient were used to determine validity and reliability. Chronbach’s alpha was 0.92 overall, and 0.70 to 0.83 for the domains. Data analysis was performed in SPSS (version 15) using Friedman and Wilcoxon tests. The majority of the 115 participants were female (87.8%), married (76.5%), and graduated from state universities (68.7%). Maximum and minimum scores came respectively from personal characteristics of faculty members, and monitoring and evaluation domains. The most effective factor in personal characteristics of faculty members was related to their dominance of the course contents. Faculty members can improve the quality of education by grasping such features as dominance in the course contents and attention to the students’ problems. Furthermore, there can be elevated educational quality in case the evaluation system provides more objective measurement and feedback.