Time to Revise the Medical Students’ Educational Curriculum: Focus on New Therapeutic Strategies as Regenerative Medicine in Neurological Disorders

Background and Aim: Healthcare students highly affect the general public regarding transferring knowledge about novel therapeutic approaches. Therefore, assessing and updating their knowledge about the application of new strategies in the treatment of different diseases is very important. The present study was designed to evaluate the level of the students’ knowledge about stem cells and their application in neurological disorders at the Guilan University of Medical Sciences (GUMS). Methods and Materials/Patients: In this cross-sectional study, a questionnaire was designed in three sections. Exclusion criteria were reluctance to participate in the project or answer to less than 20% of the questions. Inclusion criteria included studying at GUMS and willingness to participate in the project and answer the questionnaire. The questionnaire was distributed in all GUMS faculties, including medicine, paramedicine, nursing and midwifery, dentistry, health, and pharmacy. The data were analyzed by SPSS v. 16 through Pearson correlation coefficient, independent t-test, oneway analysis of variance (ANOVA), and Cronbach’s alpha. Results: According to the total awareness score, 51.2% of students showed very poor and 39.7% showed poor knowledge about stem cells and their application in neurological diseases. The knowledge score of the students in the medical faculty was higher than non-medical and was dependent on their educational year. In addition, medical students showed no significant difference in neither knowledge (F=1.406, P=0.221) nor attitude (F=0.603, P=0.697) scores. Fortunately, 72.2% of students had moderate and 20.6% had a strong attitude toward stem cell applications. A moderate correlation was observed between attitude toward stem cells and knowledge about the application of stem cells (r=0.325, P=0.000). Conclusion: GUMS students’ knowledge level was poor toward stem cells and their application in neurological diseases. It is suggested to include some courses about stem cells in the educational curriculum. However, the student’s attitude toward the use of stem cells was encouraging.