Journal of Medical Education
Volume:8 Issue: 2, May 2006

Background and Centers presenting clinical skills training in medical schools improve thestudents’ ability in practical skills, provide an appropriate setting to practice in an experimental setting and prevent probable mistakes in a real setting. This study is an attempt to determine the interns’ attitudes in Kerman University of Medical Sciences about the amount and the resources of acquiring elementary clinical skills through self-assessment. All interns, who passed the clinical skills course, participated in this cross- sectional study in 2004. A researcher made questionnaire was used to gather the data and t-test and ANOVA were used to analyze them. Most of the respondents believed a separate center as clinical skills center was necessary. Vital signs measurement, NG-tube placement and communicating with patients (18,35,17,76, and 17,3, respectively) got the highest scores in acquiring skills (stagger’s self-assessment) and the lowest scores were for cauterization, intubations and surgical tools identification (9,09, 12,84 and 14,11, respectively). The mean of self-assessment score was 76, 7%. The most used resources toacquire skills were clinical skills ward (41%), self-learning (29%) and the professors and others (27%). Since the self-assessment score was low and as the clinical skills center was used the most to acquire skills, improving training in this center and expanding its activities is necessary.

Background and Job satisfaction has been regarded as a product of harmony of one’s positive individual attitudes toward his/her work and the compatibility of the individual with his/ her duties and with the working conditions governing the job. Job satisfaction has shown to affect productivity rate, personal output and their psychosomatic presence The current study has been launched to investigate the faculty members, satisfaction with various components of their academic career, such as nature of work salary, promotion, relations with the managers and colleagues. To investigate the relationship between the individuals and various dimensions of job satisfaction, a standard self–administered questionnaire of J.D.I was distributed between 154 respondents. A total of 122 copies of the questionnaire were returned and analyzed. Distribution of the sample, on the basis of demographic variables of the participants were shown that, 82.1% of the subjects were men, 68.8% of them were over 45 years, 95.1% of the subjects were married, 82.8% of them were assistant professors and instructors and 60% of the subject were permanent official employees. The highest and the second highest level of satisfaction with the nature of their work and their colleagues respectively, whereas they showed to be least satisfied with their salaries and promotion policies. Satisfaction with career increased as the faculty members promoted to higher academic rank (P<. 05). Further analysis of the data revealed a statistically significant linearrelationship between the following pairs of variables: age and promotion aspects, salary and overall satisfaction score, years of employment and amount of salary, academic rank and promotion variable. Years of employment as a faculty member negatively correlated with all aspects of satisfaction. Alsoage was shown to be directly related to all dimensions of satisfaction (P<. 05).

Background and Rational use of drugs remains a problem in Iran. Polypharmacy, overuseof antibiotic, misuse and overuse of injections, short consulting time and poor patient compliance are common patterns of irrational use of drugs in Eastern Azarbydjan - Iran. Concerning the promotion of rational use of drugs, this study aimed the effect of educational intervention as interactive group discussion on prescribing behavior of Tabriz Northwest physicians. Fifty one general physicians from private and public sectors in Northwest of Tabriz were selected randomly and their prescriptions were analyzed. A questionnaire with 8 close questions was completed for each prescription to investigate all aspects of prescribing patterns. By a professional software the information of the prescriptions was analyzed and drug prescribing indicators such as percentage of patients receiving antibiotics, glucocorticoids and other drug groups were determined.The method of intervention included focus group and interactive group discussions. Focus group was built in group of health professionals to collect training material using pre-intervention results for interactive group discussion. The physicians were divided into two groups of control and intervention groups. Following pre-intervention study the physicians of intervention group were discussed and trained in one-day interactive group discussion course using pre-intervention data and educational materials obtained from the focus group discussion. The results of pre-intervention study showed that the average number of drugs in each prescription was 3.82. The percentage of patients receiving antibiotics, corticosteroids and injections were 40.81, 25.94 and 58.04 %, respectively. The results of this survey show great differences from WHO and international standards. Following the intervention the indicators were similar in both intervened and non-intervened groups and also were same as the pre-intervention results. The results of this study show that a very close and effective method of training program as an interactive group discussion has no beneficial effects on improving rational prescription behavior of general physicians involved in this study. To promote rational prescription the underlying factors must be considered more.

Quality assurance as a comprehensive term encompasses all policies, processes and actionsmaintaining and developing higher education quality. Quality assurance emphasizes on external goals of evaluation, one of which is to assure learners, public and government that each unit, department, program or institution manages its quality. thus quality assurance focuses on accountability.This article first describes importance of external evaluation and necessity to conduct it, then considering the fact that two educational programs leading to bachelor degrees of nursing and obstetrics, which their internal evaluation have already completed, are volunteers to go under external evaluation. Explains steps of external evaluation and focuses on the external aspect of evaluation to assure quality of educational programs following internal evaluation.

Background and Proper communication between a physician and a patient is the key to diagnosis and management of diseases. Communication skills are essential for gathering information from patients, enhancing patients truston physicians, relaxing them and managing them. The main purpose of this study was to determine the states of communication skills of medical interns to communicate with patients. In this cross sectional study, communication skills of 72 medical interns of Kerman Medical University was assessed based on a checklist completed with direct observation and a questionnaire completed through interview with patients.The checklist included two parts: the first part for individual characteristics and the second part for 24 specifications related to initiation of an interview, conducting an interview and completion of an interview. Another questionnaire with a similar structure was developed to gather patients’ comments about communication of medical interns with them. Communication skills of medical interns were weak in 29.3%, moderate in 85.4% and good in 15.9% of interns. An agreement between observed communication skills and patients’ survey results about greeting, asking patients’ names and calling them by their names, acceptable physicians’ appearance, listening to patients’ words, friendly doctor- patient encounter, empathizing with patients(0.37, 0.26, 0.22.0.41and 0.44 respectively) was seen. Results of individual variables show that relationship between age of patient and his or her opinion about communication was significant. Based on patient’s survey, the communication score given to the student increases with age of the patient. The study shows deficits in doctor-patient communication of medical interns in history taking. Given the importance of communication skills, the necessity to teach them in clinical skill centers before real contact with patients is obvious.

Background and Clinical competence has four essential components: knowledge, physical exam, problem solving and communication skill. The communication skill isn’t an optional extra in medical training but it is a core clinical skill. This study is performed in order to determine whether communication skill training for Internal Medicine and Infectious Disease residents improves their clinical competence. This study was performed in 2004-2005 in Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. Thirteen internal Medicine and Infectious Disease residents were involved in this study. We had 8 residents in group one and 5 residents in group two. Group one first participated in communication skill workshop and then their clinical skill was evaluated with objective structured clinical examination (OSCE1).Group two’s clinical skill was first evaluated with OSCE 1 and then after participating in communication skill workshop again their clinical skill was evaluated by OSCE 2.The scores ofgroup one in OSCE1 after participation in communication skill workshop were compared to group two in OSCE1 before the workshop. The scores of group two before the communication skill workshop (OSCE1)and after the workshop (OSCE2) were compared. Also the scores of group one after the workshop(OSCE1) and group two after the workshop(OSCE2) were compared. Group one after the communication skill workshop had significantly higher scores in clinical skill compared to group two before the workshop. Group two had significantly higher clinical skill scores after the communication skill workshop compared to the clinical skill scores of the same group before the workshop. Communication skill workshop significantly improved the clinical skill of Internal medicine and Infectious disease residents.

Background and patient education is one important competency expected from healthcare professionals. The aim of this study, was to evaluat quality of written materials provide foreducation of patients with chronic diseases in form of pamphlets made by nursing students. This study used a non experimental, descriptive design. In this research, first copy of 120 pamphlets made by nursing students was gathered and literacy level of each patient that pamphlet was made for him(her) wrote in first page of each. For evaluating this pamphlets, researcher usedtwo instruments: 1- self – made checklist includes three parts: message content, making and organization of the pamphlets and appearance and appeal of them and 2 - The SMOG formula for determining literacy level needed for reading this pamphlets. The results of the study revealed that, the main items chosed by students was related to endocrine system, specially diabetes, (15/8%, n= 19) and most of title discussed in these pamphlets was teaching about self – care actions (21/93%, n = 50). The average literacy level needed for reading this pamphlets was 11/74 and. Each of them doesn’t written at recommended literacy level at 6 or less..Patient education materials related to chronic diseases was written at beyound patients literacy level. if we want that patients use this materials, we must made them easear and more understanable and made them with attention to other recommended considerations.

Background and The SPICES model has been proposed to be used both as a framework for quality improvement in medical education and as a guide for evaluation of curricula. The six strategies of SPICES are representatives of innovative approaches to medical education, and each one has been considered as a continuum. The present study models a theory-based questionnaire, based on SPICES, to be used as a course evaluation tool, through developing a conceptual model for each continuum of the six. At the first step, operational definition and questionnaire development was performed as an extensive literature review and consensus building in a focus groups of experts. The content and face validity of questionnaire was confirmed. In the second phase-as a pilot -, the questionnaire was used for evaluation of Medical Pharmacology course at Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. The results showed that Medical Pharmacology course located in the traditional end of SPICES continua according to the most aspects of the course. The pilot study showed that the questionnaire scale should be changed. Also it may be more feasible and valid if an item bank is prepared based on the proposed matrix and appropriate items are selected according to the general situation of the curriculum.