Journal of Advances in Medical Education & Professionalism
Volume:4 Issue: 3, 2016 Jul

The current literature supports the inclusion of inter-professional education in healthcare education. Changes in the structure and nature of the integrated medical education and healthcare system provide some opportunities for interprofessional education among various professions. This study is an attempt to determine the perceptions of students and faculty members about interprofessional education in the context of the medical education and healthcare system.
This qualitative content analysis study was conducted using purposeful sampling in 2012. Thirteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with 6 faculty members and 7 students at Tehran and Iran Universities of Medical Sciences. Data collection and analysis were concurrent.
Data analysis revealed four categories and nine subcategories. The categories emerging from individual interviews were “educational structure”, “mediating factors”, “conceptual understanding”, and “professional identity”. These categories are explained using quotes derived from the data.
Matching the existing educational context and structure with IPE through removing barriers and planning to prepare the required resources and facilities can solve numerous problems associated with implementation and design of interprofessional training programs in Iran. In this way, promoting the development of a cooperative rather than a competitive learning and working atmosphere should be taken into account. The present findings will assist the managers and policy makers to consider IPE as a useful strategy in the integrated medical education and healthcare system.

The integration of behavioral and social sciences (BSS) into the curriculum of medical students in order to equip them with the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes is an essential issue, emphasized in many researches. Our aim is to investigate the barriers to integrate BSS into the general medicine curriculum as well as the recommended strategies to overcome such barriers through a systematic review of literature.
PubMed, ERIC, Scopus, CINAHL, Google Scholar, and OPENGREY were searched for studies on the barriers to integration of BSS into the general medicine curriculum as well as the strategies employed to overcome them until August 28, 2015.
Sixteen relevant studies were included and the related domains were categorized as barriers and some strategies were recommended to overcome them. In addition, the quality of the included studies was assessed.
Despite the prominent role of BSS in the effectiveness of health care, these sciences have not been included in the curriculum of medical students effectively. The identified barriers and the strategies used to overcome them should be considered for all integration programs. Future studies should focus on the process of BSS integration in the medical curricula and should evaluate the efficacy of this integration in more detail.

Although nursing students spend a large part of their learning period in the clinical environment, clinical learning has not been perceived by its nature yet. To develop an instrument to measure effective factors on clinical learning in nursing students.
This is a mixed methods study performed in 2 steps. First, the researchers defined “clinical learning” in nursing students through qualitative content analysis and designed items of the questionnaire based on semi-structured individual interviews with nursing students. Then, as the second step, psychometric properties of the questionnaire were evaluated using the face validity, content validity, construct validity, and internal consistency evaluated on 227 students from fourth or higher semesters. All the interviews were recorded and transcribed, and then, they were analyzed using Max Qualitative Data Analysis and all of qualitative data were analyzed using SPSS 14.
To do the study, we constructed the preliminary questionnaire containing 102 expressions. After determination of face and content validities by qualitative and quantitative approaches, the expressions of the questionnaire were reduced to 45. To determine the construct validity, exploratory factor analysis was applied. The results indicated that the maximum variance percentage (40.55%) was defined by the first 3 factors while the rest of the total variance percentage (59.45%) was determined by the other 42 factors. Results of exploratory factor analysis of this questionnaire indicated the presence of 3 instructor-staff, students, and educational related factors. Finally, 41 expressions were kept in 3 factor groups. The α-Cronbach coefficient (0.93) confirmed the high internal consistency of the questionnaire.
Results indicated that the prepared questionnaire was an efficient instrument in the study of the effective factors on clinical learning as viewed by nursing students since it involves 41 expressions and properties such as instrument design based on perception and experiences of the nursing students about effective factors on clinical learning, definition of facilitator and preventive factors of the clinical learning, simple scoring, suitable validity and reliability, and applicability in different occasions.

Several factors affect the academic performance of college students and parenting style is one significant factor. The current study has been done with the purpose of investigating the relationship between parenting styles, academic achievement and career path of students at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences.
This is a correlation study carried out at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. Among 1600 students, 310 students were selected randomly as the sample. Baumrind’s Parenting Style and Moqimi’s Career Path questionnaires were used and the obtained scores were correlated with the students’ transcripts. To study the relation between variables Pearson correlation coefficient was used.
There was a significant relationship between authoritarian parenting style and educational success (p=0.03). Also findings showed a significant relationship between firm parenting style and Career Path of the students, authoritarian parenting style and Career Path of the students, educational success and Career Path of the students (p=0.001).
Parents have an important role in identifying children’s talent and guiding them. Mutual understanding and close relationship between parents and children are recommended. Therefore, it is recommended that the methods of correct interaction of parents and children be more valued and parents familiarize their children with roles of businesses in society and the need for employment in legitimate businesses and this important affair should be more emphasized through mass media and family training classes.

Feedback cards are recommended as a feasible tool for structured written feedback delivery in clinical education while effectiveness of this tool on the medical students’ performance is still questionable. The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of structured written feedback by cards as well as verbal feedback versus verbal feedback alone on the clinical performance of medical students at the Mini Clinical Evaluation Exercise (Mini-CEX) test in an outpatient clinic.
This is a quasi-experimental study with pre- and posttest comprising four groups in two terms of medical students’ externship. The students’ performance was assessed through the Mini-Clinical Evaluation Exercise (Mini-CEX) as a clinical performance evaluation tool. Structured written feedbacks were given to two experimental groups by designed feedback cards as well as verbal feedback, while in the two control groups feedback was delivered verbally as a routine approach in clinical education.
By consecutive sampling method, 62 externship students were enrolled in this study and seven students were excluded from the final analysis due to their absence for three days. According to the ANOVA analysis and Post Hoc Tukey test, no statistically significant difference was observed among the four groups at the pre-test, whereas a statistically significant difference was observed between the experimental and control groups at the post-test (F=4.023, p=0.012). The effect size of the structured written feedbacks on clinical performance was 0.19.
Structured written feedback by cards could improve the performance of medical students in a statistical sense. Further studies must be conducted in other clinical courses with longer durations.

Triage is a response to the problem of overcrowding in Emergency Departments (EDs) and accuracy of decisions made by the triage unit affects the ultimate outcome of EDs. This study was conducted to evaluate the knowledge of triage among last year medical students in Shiraz University of Medical Sciences.
This is a cross-sectional analytical study whose subjects were all the senior students of medicine (62) in the last year of medicine from January to June 2013 who attended emergency medicine course in the screen room of 2 University Hospitals. This questionnaire was designed in 3 sections including personal data, 15 questions on knowledge of triage and 10 case scenarios for triage decision making and completed by the students. Statistical analysis was performed in SPSS statistical software (version 14) using independent sample t-test, one way ANOVA, and Pearson correlation coefficient (p≤0.001).
The total mean score of the participants was 10.6±1.5, ranging from 7 to 13. 58(93.5%) students had poor triage knowledge. In the scenario’s section, the percentage of correct triage by students was 49.2% and those of over and under triage were 28.1% and 22.7%, respectively. There was a significant relationship between the triage accuracy and level of triage (ESI 4) (p≤0.001).
The level of knowledge of triage in the last year medical students was poor, although most of them had passed a course in the screen room. It is recommended that medical students’ educational courses should include sections on the knowledge of triage in emergency rooms.

Note taking while attending a PPT requires high activity of memory and writing process which ultimately leads to what is called “death by power point” referring to boredom and fatigue. To overcome this we planned to evaluate the impact of utilisation of uncompleted handouts given prior to PPT presentations.
Final year MBBS students were divided in 2 batches, batch A and batch B. For a set of lectures one batch was provided with handouts before lecture while the other batch was given lectures only. Crossover was done to avoid bias, all the lectures being given by the same presenter. At the end of each lecture, a short questionnaire of 10 Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) was provided to the students. Mean scores were calculated for lectures with handouts and without handouts.
For a set of lectures, when batch A was provided with handouts, the mean score was 28.2; for batch B to which no handouts were given the mean score was 23.4. Similarly, for batch B when provided with handouts the mean score was 29.1, for batch A which was not provided with handouts the mean score was 24. There was an average increase of 4.2 marks. Actual gain when handouts were provided was 1.2 marks per lecture. It was more for the batch comprising of repeater students as compared to the batch of fresher students. Increase in attendance was also noted.
Providing uncompleted handouts before a didactic lecture definitely results in increase in knowledge gain; repeater students benefit more with uncompleted handouts.

For some time now the field of medical education has been criticized by many of its stakeholders. Countless debates have been presented in the literature regarding the quality of medical education research, adequacy of methodological rigor, and other concerns.
At present, the views expressed have largely come from physicians and individuals with less familiarity with education science.
As prolific educational researchers with Ph.Ds in Education and Psychology, we offer a critique of medical education’s apparent identity crisis and address what we believe are some of the most significant problems continuing to impede the field of medical education from catching up with the broader field of education. We close with specific recommendations for improving the overall state of medical education.
Finally, both editors and reviewers for medical education journals need to abandon the hegemonic views regarding research design. Thus, research designs that many in the clinical sciences often perceive as ‘weak’ are entirely appropriate in education research fields.