Journal of Medical Education
Volume:7 Issue: 1, Feb 2005

"Telephone" has been used as an educational device for educational purposes in several university centers in the world. Nowadays, "Teleconference", "Teleconsultation", "Telemedicine" and "Computerized methods", are common educational methods.Telephone in this study was used as an educational means to practice certain educational and professional subjects. In this study, telephone was used to practice important educational points by medical students. The method was called "Telepraxis" and the present paper introduces this innovative educational experience and reports theresults of measuring the rate of students’ satisfaction. In this study 4 different educational courses were presented to 508 students at pre-hospital, clerkship, and residency stages. The program was implemented for 15 sessions and at the end of each session, we inquired students’ viewpoints about our suggested method by using a Lickert’s type questionnaire that was designed with 24characteristics of an effective educational method. We calculated the students’ satisfaction index and compared the scores applying student T-Test. The participants’ mean satisfaction index was 84.4%, which was significantly higher than those of unsatisfied, (p<.001). The satisfaction index for the students in clerkship stage was higher than that of the prehospital students or residents. Telepraxis in 4 courses of primary surgery, health cares, semiology, and CPR skills, was approved by the learners on all the 24 traits of an effective teaching method.

Having an estimate of needed workforce is necessary for workforce planning. Time and work study is a means to provide basic data in this regard. To determine delivery time for common type of dental care, dentists’ working time in Tehran. A cross-sectional study was conducted among the general dentists who work in private clinics in Tehran. 100 dentists were chosen randomly. They filled out a self-administered questionnaire. In order to determine the time spent on each service by the dentists, the median was calculated as the central index. The list of dental treatments was determined by median time to deliver each of them. The usefulworking time was 90000 minutes for each dentist during a year. The results of this study can be used in estimating dental workforce and reforming dental educational programs.

Nurses are the biggest group of health system professionals and have a considerable effect on the quality of the health care currently being provided. To investigate awareness, attitude, and professional function of nurses from the view points of person himself, colleagues, instructors and service consumers (patients). This research is a cross-sectional study carried out to compare the awareness, attitude, and function in employed nurses and senior nursing students. Subjects of the study were 54 employed nurses who had B.S degree from Shaheed Beheshti University of Medical Sciences and had been in service for4 to 6 years in internal or surgery wards in one of the University’s hospitals and were steel working at the time of the study. Subjects were chosen with purpose based sampling method and were compared with 54 senior university students from the faculty of nursing and midwifery who were ready to pass their training period in internal or surgery wards and were chosen randomly. The tools for collecting data were 4 questionnaires on the degree of awareness, attitude, professional functioning, and the viewpoints of patients, supervisors, and instructors. Mean score of awareness for the nurses and students was 63.7 3.2 and 45.3 2.1 respectively (P<0.005).Regarding internal and surgical care and updates of nursing, the score of the nurses has been higher generally (P<0.005). But about paediatrics, health, and psychological nursing the two groups were almost alike. 52% of all the persons studied had a positive attitude toward nursing and 46% of them were indifferent. From the patients point of view all the nurses and students function was evaluated in a good level. But supervisors considered employed nurses better than the students with mean scores of 56.2 4 and 53.4 6 respectively. (P<0.002) In subgroups of care and treatment, education and personal characteristics, there was no meaningful difference between supervisor’s and instructors’ opinions. This research showed that employed nurses and students of nursing in Shaheed Beheshti University of Medical Sciences had a good level of awareness and mostly a positive attitude toward nursing. Patients had a favourable opinions about giving services and the behaviour of nurses and students.

According to the measurements literature reliability of the test refers to the consistency of the test results and shows whether the obtained score is stable indication of the student’s performance in particular test Reliability can be measured by different statistics formula. To determine the factors influenced the reliability of 392 MCQ examinations. The correlation of reliabilities of MCQ based examination and other characteristics of tests such as length difficult items, discrimination index, mean, standard deviation and time for answering was calculated based on the data available on examination center of Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Multivariate regression has been used for data analysis. overall reliability of teacher made test is at satisfactory level in most cases. The mean value of reliability was 0.71 ±0.15. In comparing previous semester with last series of examination some improvement have been found during these years (P=0.000, for first semester, P=0.002 for second, P= 0.005 for third and P=0.005 for forth semester). Keeping other variable fixed the interaction of length of exam according to item difficulty showedl significant difference on value of test reliability. Comparing difficult and easy items question with moderate difficulty index can increase reliability 8 times more than difficult and 13 times more than easy items P=0.000. Our study showed that with documentation of tests’ metric features an analysis and evaluation of tests are within reach of medical school.

According to the measurements literature reliability of the test refers to the consistency of the test results and shows whether the obtained score is stable indication of the student’s performance in particular test Reliability can be measured by different statistics formula. To determine the factors influenced the reliability of 392 MCQ examinations. The correlation of reliabilities of MCQ based examination and other characteristics of tests such as length difficult items, discrimination index, mean, standard deviation and time for answering was calculated based on thedata available on examination center of Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Multivariate regression has been used for data analysis. overall reliability of teacher made test is at satisfactory level in most cases. The mean value of reliability was 0.71 ±0.15. In comparing previous semester with last series of examination some improvement have been found during these years (P=0.000, for first semester, P=0.002 for second, P= 0.005 for third and P=0.005 for forth semester). Keeping other variable fixed the interaction of length of exam according to item difficulty showedl significant difference on value of test reliability. Comparing difficult and easy items question with moderate difficulty index can increase reliability 8 times more than difficult and 13 times more than easy items P=0.000. Our study showed that with documentation of tests’ metric features an analysis and evaluation of tests are within reach of medical school.

The Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Zahedan implemented the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) in the final Examination during the 2003–2004 academic year. Simultaneously, the pediatricdepartment initiated faculty and student training, and instituted the OSCE as an assessment instrument during the pediatric clerkship in year 5. The study set out to explore student acceptance of the OSCE as part of an evaluation of the Pediatric clerkship. This study implemented to evaluate a new method of assessment in medical education in pediatrics. A self-administered questionnaire was completed by successive groups of students immediately after the OSCE at the end of each clerkship rotation. Main outcome measures were student perception of examination attributes, which included the quality of instructions and organization, the quality of performance, authenticity and transparency of the process, and usefulness of the OSCE as an assessment instrument compared to other methods. There was overwhelming acceptance of the OSCE in Pediatric with respect to the comprehensiveness (90%), transparency (87%), fairness (57%) and authenticity of the required tasks (58–78%). However, students felt that itwas a strong anxiety-producing experience. And concerns were expressed regarding the ambiguity of some questions and inadequacy of time for expected tasks. Student feedback was invaluable in influencing faculty teaching, curriculum direction and appreciation of student opinion. Further psychometric evaluation will strengthen the development of the OSCE.

Medical education of IRAN witnessed a lot of changes in recent years. Evaluation of educational activities has been one important intervention introduced in this regard. We designed a new format and evaluated the function of educational groups of Tabriz Medical Science University at 2000 Educational group’s structure and function of internal medicine ward, infectious disease group, urology ward and genecology ward were compromised with each other. There was a lot of difference between function of educational groups. In some groups, students had no pleasure from the education. It is necessary to investigate the problems of education and solve them by regular and exact program and educational intra group evaluation.

Mitochondrial respiration is a complex process which its biochemistry is often poorly understood by undergraduate students when explained in toxicology lectures. The use of experiments to reinforce their knowledge is important, but not always possible because of low teaching budgets. Therefore, a low cost model, made using water, oil, styrofoam and modeling clay, is presented here to simulate the transduction membrane, and the complexes embedded in it. Using this model, students can represent and understandelectron flow and proton translocation, the chemiosmotic hypothesis and the effects of inhibitors and uncouplers. Students that have used this model enjoyed studying mitochondrial respiration and learned and understood the biochemistry of transduction membranes as well as lipid and protein interactions, and were well motivated to study the phenomenon in depth by themselves.

Critical thinking is a cognitive activity for the purpose of perception and evaluation of findings and phenomena on the basis of skills such as reasoning and analysis. In Iran the students of nursing may achieve their BS degree in two forms of continuous and interrupted. As the students of continuous and interrupted BS in nursing are regarded as a BS degree holder in nursing after their graduation, and the society expects a same level of critical thinking skills from both of the groups, we decided to compare the level of critical thinking skills in the students of continuous and discontinuous BS in nursingin Semnan university of medical sciences. This study is a comparative study to compare the level of critical thinking skills in students of continuous and interrupted BS of nursing in Semnan University of Medical Sciences. The sample volume includes all the students of continuous Bs in nursing from juniors to seniors (N = 70) and the students of interrupted BS in nursing who where passing their first or second years of study during the first semester of year 2000 – 2001. The tool used in this study is California test of critical thinking skills, form B that contains 34 multiple-choice questions with one true answer infive aspects of cognitive skills of critical thinking (analysis, evaluation, inference, deductive and inductive reasoning). All of the subjects completed the above mentioned test which has been validated by the second author in another study beforehand. Data were analyzed by software SPSSWIN and also ANOVA and t statistical tests. Mean scores of continuous Bs students and interrupted ones were 12.34 with SD = 2.45 and 11.27 with SD = 3.10 respectively and the difference between the mean scores of the two groups was statistically significant. (t = 1.76, p = 0.005). There was a meaningful difference between the mean scores of the students of different years in the continuous BS group. (F 3,60 = 4.28, P = 0.000) but the difference between the mean scores of the students of first and second year of interrupted BS in nursing (11.28 and 11.51 respectively) was not statistically significant. In both groups there were no significant correlation between the age or sex of the students and their mean score in California critical thinking skills test (CCTST) but there was a positive and significant but week correlation between the averageof past terms and the mean score of CCTST. (r = 0.31, p = 0.01) The results of the study showed that the students of continuous BS level in nursing had a higher level of critical thinking skills than the students of interrupted BS studies. Also in this group the students in advanced years ofstudy own higher level of critical thinking skills than those in lower terms. In other words nursing education and higher education has led to a development of critical thinking skills in students.