The Viewpoints of Medical Students in Acquiring Management, Educational and Individual Skills after Passing the Community Medicine Courses

Abstract

Background: One of the main concerns of policy makers and planners in the field of education and health has been to measure achievement of goals. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a one-month course of social medicine internship on knowledge, attitude and acquiring management, educational and individual skills after attending health centers and community. Methods: This applied cross-sectional study was conducted in Isfahan Medical School in 2014. The research community consisted of 96 medical students introduced to the social medicine internship course that were selected by the census method. The research instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire that its validity and reliability were assessed and confirmed. Data were described by frequency, mean and descriptive standard deviation and analyzed by Chi-Square test (χ 2) in SPSS 16 software. Results: After passing the course, the improving period of management skills, communication and strengthen confidence with the frequency of 78 (81.3 %), 74 (77.1 %) and 70 (72.9 %) were more acceptable among the students. Less than 50 % of participants believed that this course was effective in the depth of previous trainings, determination of future educational path and facilitates an opportunity to share ideas with graduated doctors. Conclusion: The results of the study showed that the new lesson plan of the social medicine course is effective in changing the attitude, management and communication skills of students; however, it cannot enhance the previous learning depth and determine the future educational path through participation of job ideas with graduated doctors. Therefore, it needs to be redefined.

Keywords

• Social medicine
• Attitude
• Medical student
• Management skill