Assessing Midwifery Students Interest in Their Career at Medical Sciences Universities in Tehran

Interest to education is the one of the most important factors for learning and is formed from motivation and curiosity. It is well known the person who is motivated, insists for progress and gaining knowledge more and more. Therefore, learners interest in their career is one of the optimums in educational programs improvement and ultimately it result in their reproductively and take on responsibility so lots of attention should be given to this fact. The purpose of this study was to identify midwifery students, interest to their career at three medical sciences universities of Tehran in 2006. In this descriptive study, a number of 260 midwifery students, studying in their 1st to 8th semester at Tehran medical universities participated. The sampling was done through census and the means for collecting data was questionnaire. Its validity was carried by contents validity and its reliability was assigned by means of t-test (r=0.9). The information achieved were analyses by SPSS program using Spirman correlation coefficient and statistic test of χ2. Findings showed that midwifery students, interests in their career were not favorable (%37.5) and the majority of them had not selected their career with enough interest. The most important factors for interest in the career were the occupation that is usefull in personal life and the exciting experiences in this career. There was positive correlation between selecting career in regard personal trends and current interest in the career. Also, there wasn’t significant relation between interest in the career and parents, qualification, occupation and students, semester. With regard to findings of this study, it can conclude that the midwifery students did not evaluate their career equivalent with their needs and this fact might lead to health system damage. So, it is necessary for all midwifves to be responsible to try to find out the reasons of this problem and try to solve them. Moreover reviewing in accepting higher education students is essential.