Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences Student's Attitude to Community-Oriented Education

There is an urgent need to change medical education program based on community needs that caused to reform medical educational program. The aim of this study was to determine student's attitude to community oriented education at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in 2013. This descriptive cross sectional study performed on 130 fourth term medical students. The instrument was a self-rated questionnaire including 13 attitude and 5 demographic questions. For evaluation of construct validity, factor analysis was performed; and comparison of groups was done by ANOVA and t tests; level of significance also was considered P<0.05. 120 members of students participated in the study (response rate 92.3%), 57.6% were female and their age ranged from 20 to 23 years. The mean (Standard Deviation) of overall attitude score, score of holistic health care scope, and score of the importance and need of community oriented education was 3.86 (0.74), 3.97 (0.80) and 3.69 (0.86), respectively, that all of them were higher in compare with mid score(mean score between one to fine) (p<0.001); moreover, the overall attitude score and scores of the two scopes were higher in females (p<0.001), but the difference between age groups was not significant (p>0.05). This study suggests the positive attitude of student in holistic health care, and the importance and need of community oriented education.