Journal of Medical Education Development
Volume:16 Issue: 51, Autumn 2023

Providing exceptional attention to cancer patients requires nursing education in the oncology unit. Thus, this study aimed to acquire and improve clinical competency in nursing students through the Mastery Learning approach and compare it with traditional education.

This study used a mixed-method (exploratory sequential design) approach to develop a clinical competency checklist and evaluate students' skills through Mastery Learning. This research started with a qualitative study and continued with a quantitative one. We developed the checklist using a three-round Delphi method, comprising 41 items based on 7 criteria. An internship program was offered to 20 nursing students in two groups (i.e., Mastery Learning training and traditional training) at the oncology department of Hakim Hospital, Neyshabur, Iran, for one semester. To assess the impact of the intervention on students' anxiety, an Evaluation Apprehension Measure questionnaire was administered to each student before the posttest, followed by a 5-item objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) to assess students' final skills. The competency and anxiety questionnaire was also checked for reliability and validity.

For the clinical competence checklist, 41 out of 52 items showed more than 80% agreement. The results of the anxiety test demonstrated that students receiving Mastery Learning were moderately anxious, while students undergoing traditional training had high levels of anxiety. The results of the OSCE test showed that the students in the Mastery Learning group had significantly higher scores than their peers in the traditional training group.

This study found that Mastery Learning led to a reduction in test anxiety and an increase in clinical competence.

Changing the type of care in the family health internship curriculum towards continuing care programs can lead to the development of the professional identity of learners. This study was conducted with the aim of designing, implementing and evaluating a tele-continuous care program after delivery for midwifery students.

In this educational process, each student under the direction of the support team was responsible for the continuing care of his client for 6 weeks after delivery. The program was designed based on Taylor's curriculum development model and the evaluation of learners was done by qualitative interviews and completion of portfolios during the course at two levels of reaction and learning Kirkpatrick's model.

Data in the three main categories was categorized as  "learning", "continuous care" and "health provider" with sub-categories include new concept of postpartum period, knowing more about the profession of midwifery, improving communication skills with the client, strengthening the student's self-confidence, eagerness to learn, new experience of taking history, not being judged by others, daring to ask questions, synergy of knowledge, walking in mother's shoes, increasing intimacy, anticipating upcoming issues, availability, ability of follow-up, sense of pleasantness, sense of support,  earlier familiarization of the client with the conditions ahead, trust of the client and more motivation to provide service.

It appears that placing midwifery students in a continuing care model will provide them the opportunity to experience a rich holistic learning.

Physicians require to develop some abilities such as self-assessment, critical thinking, self-regulatory learning, and lifelong learning. Reflection is one of the essential educational concepts that make it possible to cultivate and create such abilities in medical students and health professionals. The aim of this study was translation and psychometric evaluation of Kember reflective thinking questionnaire in Iranian physicians.

First, the Kember reflective thinking questionnaire was translated according to backward-forward translation procedure. Then, face validity was evaluated by examining the opinion of experts. Next, content validity was assessed by calculating content validity index and content validity ratio. Subsequently, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis was studied among 280 specialist and general physicians. Then, reliability was examined by calculating the intra-class correlation coefficient and investigating Cronbach's alpha coefficient.

Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the whole scale was 0.849 and the intra-class correlation coefficient was 0.714. Content validity index was 0.849 and content validity ratio was 0.825. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis resulted in a four-factors model including habitual action, understanding, reflection and critical reflection in the Iranian medical community.

The Persian version of Kember reflective thinking questionnaire with four factors has the desired reliability and validity in the Iranian medical community. Due to the appropriate psychometric properties, and ease of implementation, it can be used to evaluate the level of reflection of doctors.

There has always been controversy surrounding the teaching of diagnostic and treatment measures for novel diseases and rare treatment side effects through articles. Efficient training methods are one of the effective factors in students' academic enthusiasm. The present study was conducted to investigate the impact of case study-based training on the academic enthusiasm of midwifery students.

This cross-sectional interventional controlled study was conducted on 20 midwifery students of Ilam University of Medical Sciences, Ilam, Iran, over two semesters. Sampling was carried out in the form of the total population sampling method, and the samples were randomly assigned to the intervention and control groups. The intervention group underwent routine training and the review of case report articles on rare types of ectopic pregnancy, whereas the control group only received routine training. Data were collected through a demographic form and the Academic Enthusiasm Questionnaire. Data analysis was performed in SPSS21 software. Independent t-test was used for inter-group comparison and paired t-test for intra-group comparison.

The results of comparing inter-group and intra-group mean scores of academic enthusiasm showed no significant difference between the intervention and control groups in either phase one or phase two of the study (P<0.05).

Case study-based teaching of ectopic pregnancy had no impact on the academic enthusiasm of midwifery students in the clinical environment. Further studies are recommended to explore how case report articles on different topics affect the academic enthusiasm of students in other medical sciences in clinical settings.

The objectives of this study were to design, implement, and evaluate an educational game on the diagnosis and management of diabetes for pharmacy students.

Educational content for diabetes was prepared and used to design a multimedia file and game scenario. The game was validated and consisted of 25 stages of diagnosing and managing diabetes. Participants were 8th-semester pharmacy students who were divided into two groups. Groups A and B had 10-day access to the multimedia and game files, respectively. Pretest and post-test were held to evaluate students’ learning, and the final exam was used to assess retention. Moreover, user experience was evaluated by a modified and validated version of the Model for the Evaluation of Educational Games questionnaire.

A total of 154 students participated in the study. The mean ranks were 69.25 and 60.99 (P=0.808) in the pretest; 64.80 and 67.63 (P=0.551) in the post-test; and 67.44 and 62.19 (P=0.490) in the final exam for groups A and B, respectively. Ninety-nine participants completed the quality questionnaire of the study. The students confirmed the quality of the game in nearly all quality dimensions. About 80 percent of the game users preferred it over usual teaching methods.

A high-quality educational game for diabetes was designed and implemented. Although the use of the game was not associated with increased learning or retention scores, pharmacy students preferred it over traditional teaching methods.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the pattern of medical education. This study aimed to investigate the study habits of students at Arak University of Medical Sciences, Arak, its relationship with academic success, and the related factors.

This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted by random sampling method on 340 students of Arak University of Medical Sciences during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022. The required data for this study were collected through a demographic form and Palsani and Sharma's Study Habits Inventory. Data analysis was conducted in Stata software using independent t-tests, one-way analysis of variance, and Pearson correlation.

A total of 229 female and 111 male students participated in this study, and the results showed that the majority of the students (84.19%) had relatively favorable study habits. The mean score of the students' study habits was obtained at 50.70±8.86, and the highest scores were related to the subscales of taking tests and reading ability. A positive correlation was observed between the overall score of study habits and the grade point average (r=0.19, P≤0.001) and the number of siblings (r=0.12, P≤0.001). The score of study habits showed a significant relationship between study hours and English language level (P≤0.001).

The status of students' study habits was reported to be relatively favorable and related to academic success. It is recommended to improve the training level of students in virtual education, enhance their English language level, and create more interaction to strengthen motivation to study and learn in the self-learning process.

Many clinical reasoning teaching techniques have been reported in the literature. The authors focused on 2 teaching techniques of clinical reasoning, the technique Summarize, Narrow, Analyze, Probe the preceptor, Plan, Self-selected topic (SNAPPS) and the Clinical Reasoning Technique (CRT), and compared their efficiency to improve the clinical reasoning competencies of third-year undergraduate medical students.

The authors performed a prospective randomized, controlled, non-blinded crossover trial including year-3 undergraduate medical students. Judgment criteria consisted of the scores attributed to a test assessing the cognitive competencies of the participants which was a structured summary performed by the students after each session. Besides, a satisfaction Likert-scale questionnaire was fulfilled by the students. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS software (version 20.0).

Seventy-two students were included with a mean age of 21.03 (SD:2,30) years. The mean scores of the students allocated to the CRT arm reached 4.62 (SD:2.93)versus 4.99 (SD:2.93) for the SNAPPS arm. No significant statistical difference was observed between the mean scores according to the method used. The analysis of the satisfaction questionnaire revealed that 75% of the students preferred CRT because of the collaborative work performed.

This study highlights the need for varying techniques to improve the critical reasoning skills of medical students. Besides, it pointed out students' preference for collaborative approaches illustrating socio-constructivist theories of learning.

While there are numerous advantages to using cyberspace for students' learning, it also increases the likelihood of unethical behavior. Therefore, this qualitative study aimed to identify and analyze ethical faults in cyberspace at Jahrom University of Medical Sciences.

This study was conducted at Jahrom University of Medical Sciences over a five-year period using a qualitative approach with thematic analysis. The population included 467 students, who were divided into ten groups and had taken a medical etiquette course. The students were asked to draw their desired factors in a visual art format as tree branches while working in teams to express ethical faults and issues in cyberspace. A total of 9 focus groups and 23 teamwork documents were analyzed, and groups with comprehensive analysis of the issue were selected by purposive sampling and focus groups interview to continue until data saturation was achieved. Braun & Clark's six-phase framework was used for thematic analysis in data analysis.

The findings of this study identified three major themes or factors related to cyberspace, including reasons, faults, and preventive solutions that had creator-dependent 27 factors (Sub-themes) and 160 codes. These themes revealed the major ethical concepts in cyberspace from the student's viewpoint.

As technology develops rapidly, it is crucial to ensure integrity in education for all stakeholders related to an online learning community. Therefore, educational institutions need to focus on preventing cyber faults by educating and training users.

Integrated teaching in undergraduate medical curriculum aims to support meaningful learning to the students as it provides relevance to basic sciences in clinical practice, by matching learning with the way knowledge is to be used. This review aimed to highlight the pros and cons of integrated teaching in undergraduate medical curricula with proposed solutions.

This was a brief review that was conducted by searching the database of PubMed with the keywords, Competency-based, Medical curriculum, Undergraduate, and Integration, from the year 2010 to 2022.

The search resulted in a total of 34 articles. Sixteen articles were excluded because the target audience was not medical. Thus a total of 18 articles are compared and tabulated. Most of the reviews and studies highlighted that integrated teaching reinforces and breaks the complexities of the students in understanding the practical knowledge required to develop a professional dedication to the care of the patients and make them lifelong learners. Major challenges discussed are duration, special training for facilitators, and preparing an elaborate module with specific learning objectives.

The review highlights that integrated teaching has multiple benefits that are essential for a better understanding of the subjects and the academic performance of the students. However one must also acknowledge the existence of various challenges encountered at different levels of implementation and the proposed solutions that are addressed in this review.

Medical education as a discipline currently accepts students with two M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Iran. This Ph.D. course was approved by the Curriculum Council Committee in Medical Sciences in 1386 AH (2016 AD). The curriculum of medical education has a total of 50 credits (including core: 20, non-core: 8, and dissertation: 22), which subsume various courses and topics such as student assessment, curriculum planning, educational leadership, program and teacher evaluation, qualitative research, educational research, clinical teaching, and so on (1).
One of the necessary competencies expected from graduates of Ph.D. in medical education in Iran is to be able to have activity and innovation in various units of the Education Development Center (EDC), and it is necessary to acquire knowledge and skills about these units. One of these units is the “educational scholarship” unit, which performs various activities such as consulting, writing, and activities in the field of innovative and educational projects. The serious critique of the curriculum is that no course credit related to educational scholarship has been considered in the Ph.D. curriculum of medical education, so there is no time and program to teach this important topic to Ph.D. students of medical education, while it is one of their necessary and expected competencies. The absence of an educational program will lead to a lack of learning, and as a result, the student will not be empowered in this field.
The proposal that is presented is that a 2-credit course (1 theoretical and 1 practical credit) with the title "Educational Scholarship" be placed in the curriculum of Ph.D. medical education (as a core course).