Evaluation of experiences of physicians participating in PhD exam of Traditional Persian Medicine: A qualitative research

Background and Purpose:

Understanding the experiences of people involved in various phenomena is very important. Twelve years after the establishment of the Persian Medicine Schools, and holding annual exams for the PhD course in Persian Medicine since 2007, the opinions of the exam participants and their motivations can be scientifically studied. The aim of this study was to obtain the experiences of physicians participating in Persian medicine PhD exam to identify this phenomenon.
 

In this qualitative study, sampling was performed through in-depth interviews with 25 physicians volunteering to enter the field of Persian Medicine in the 2019 academic year, who were accepted in the first stage, the written exam, and invited for an oral interview. The interviews were thoroughly recorded. The content of the interviews was written down, and the coding and analysis was done by Granhim and Londman method.

Findings of this study were extracted in 6 main themes including the way participants got acquainted with Persian Medicine,  their motivation to take the test, their pre-test concerns, exam preparation methods, the opinion of other physicians about Persian Medicine and the approach to introduce Persian Medicine. Eighteen sub-themes were also extracted. 

The results of this study can be useful for health policy-makers to guide motivators and reduce the concerns of Persian Medicine PhD exam’s participants and Persian Medicine students. It can also provide appropriate approach for admitting the students and improving the quality of education in this field, so that appropriate steps would be taken.