The Viewpoints of Interns and Clerkship Students about Community Medicine Course

Community-Oriented Medical Education (COME), compared to traditional education in hospitals is considered a new educational approach in the school of medicine. This study was designed to determine the quality of education during the Clerkship and internship in community medicine course in Shahrekord Medical University. In a descriptive cross-sectional study, 41 clerckship students and 14 interns selected by convenience sampling method were studied. The data was collected by a valid and reliable questionnaire and analyzed by descriptive statistics using SPSS software. Eighty percent of Clerkship students and less than 50% of interns were satisfied with the course plan, the content of the workshop, the presence of faculty members and answering Students’ questions. In addition, more than 80% of Clerkship students and less than 42% of interns revealed their satisfaction from teaching health management such as collecting data, data analysis, prioritizing the problems, and planning and evaluation. Teaching specific programs such as vaccination, family planning and so on was supported by more than 85% of clerkship students, and almost 97.5% of them were satisfied with teaching situational analysis of health care system. Considering community oriented education approach in medical schools of the world and spending one month community medicine as an obligatory course in all medical schools of Iran, the revision of community medicine course seems necessary.