The Necessity to Revise the Virology Course: Perspective of Students of Medicine and Medical Laboratory Sciences

Virology is one of the most important courses in medical sciences programs, so that teaching it improperly would lead to reduced skills of viral disease diagnosis in clinics and labs. Nevertheless, virology is offered as a small part of microbiology course in most medical schools. Hence the purpose of this paper was to investigate medical and MLS students’ perspective on the necessity of revising the virology course at Hamedan and Kermanshah Universities of Medical Sciences. This descriptive, cross-sectional research was conducted on medical apprentices and interns and senior MLS students at Hamedan and Kermanshah Universities of Medical Sciences in 2016. A total of 275 students were selected by means of census method. Data were collected by a researcher-made questionnaire and analyzed by means of descriptive statistics, independent t-test and Mann-Whitney test. Most of the medical (n=154, 80.7%) and MLS (n=67, 79.8%) students perceived virology as a very important course; moreover, 94 of the medical students (49.3%) and 40 of the MLS students (47.6%) agreed to more credits for this course. Findings showed a significant difference in gender between the scores of MLS students only in the educational environment area(p=0.026). However, no significant difference was found in gender between the scores of medical students in any of the areas. Based on the findings, the students considered virology as one of the most important courses in their fields and agreed to the revision of syllabuses and credits. Given the clinical importance and application of the virology course, revision of the curriculum for this course seems necessary.