Comparing the current status with desired situation of the quality of education and improvement for rural health workers in Iran

Background: Rural health workers (Behvarz) are considered health- care pioneers standing at the forefront of providing services for rural areas. Those health providers need to be optimally educated throughout the country. What can serve this purpose is an integrated high quality “education”. Methods: The current descriptive research compared two situations of education quality. To this end 300, rural health workers completed researcher-made questionnaires, including 2 dimensions,7 components and, 80 questions obtained from the analysis of the qualitative process through the fuzzy Delphi method. Results: The results indicated a gap between the current status and desirable situations of qualitative improvement components of rural health workers’ education. The findings also showed that the highest standardized coefficient in the area of education was related to the variable of learning and transfer of education with a coefficient of 0.971. In the area of optimization, the highest standard coefficient for the desirable situation belonged to the interpersonal and functional relationship variable, with the value of 0.978, while the lowest standardized coefficient was related to the variable of information and communication technology (ICT) development as 0.956. Conclusion: In brief, optimal education for the health- care providers is considered an integral part of the health system; therefore, the impact of education on the general health of the people should be taken into consideration. Therefore, there is a need for theoretical and practical exploration of qualitative education towards health system improvement and promotion.