Clerkship from the Perspective of Students of Health Services Management and Family Health in Tabriz University of Medical Sciences

Health services management and family health students require professional knowledge and skills to meet clients’ and health systems needs and expectations. In this area, clerkship has a fundamental role to achieve specific skills and competencies. This study aimed at exploring the root problems in clerkship from the viewpoint of students in order to suggest applicable recommendations to promote the quality of education and design an appropriate clerkship program. This is a qualitative research conducted to detect clerkship problems in health services management and family health programs in July2008. Focus Group Discussion (FGD) as a qualitative data collection method was used to determine clerkship problems from the perspective of health services management and family health students. Three FGDs were carried out with 22 students. The results showed that themes of coordination, teaching and supervision in the fields, tutor attendance in the fields and final exam were as the most important problem roots. Themes of planning, lesson plan, educational resources, field report and orientation workshops were found as relatively important problems. Finally, themes of hands-on practice, checking students’ presence, field workers cooperation and their satisfaction were the least important problems. The findings revealed that most of the concerns expressed by the students rooted from themes of coordination with school and clerkship fields, teaching and supervision in the fields, attendance of tutor in the fields, final exam, planning, lesson plan, educational resources, field report and orientation workshops. Therefore, solving these problems will improve quality of clerkship education and consequently students’ knowledge and competencies.