Achieving Educational Goals in Neurology Ward from the Viewpoint of Clinical Clerkship at Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences in 2012

Dear Editor In medical education, setting goals for clinical clerkship is the responsibility of educational groups. Taking the studentsʹ opinions into account, it is possible to study the efficacy of education in terms of learning and achieving educational goals. (1) In periodontics and restorative departments of Shahed and Tehran University of Medical Sciences, it is reported that, achieving educational goals is not poss­ible (2). There are studies indicating the achievement of educational goals and their effective factors in Nursing, Midwifery and operation Room (3). In this descriptive-analytic study, 166 medical students of neurology wards at Imam Reza Hospital in Kermanshah during 2011- 2012 were selected via a survey to study the achievement rate of educational goals. We used a questionnaire to collect data. Reliability of the questionnaire (including content and face validity) was obtained via consulting with ten faculty members of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences. The mean age of the participants was 21.34 (±1.43) years. 60.5% of them were females. 3.6% were freshmen and 49.9% were sophomores. 79.5% knew the goals before the start of clinical clerkship and 76.5% took part in the justification session in which their responsibility and method of evaluation were presented. 78.3% of them received the emergency protocol of Neurology. Overall, the participants ranked the goal achievement as high (41.6%), well (45.2%) and medium (23.3%). There was no statistically significantly association between achieving educational goals and age and clinical clerkship period. However, there was a statis­tically significantly association between the increase rate of achieving educational goals and introducing the objectives at the beginning of clinical clerkship period (p=0.011), justification session at the beginning of clinical clerkship (p=0.019) being familiar with emergency protocols of Neurology (p=0.04) and the season (winter in comparison with fall and spring) in which clinical clerkship took place (p < 0.001) The high achievement rate in the issues like presence of the teacher and his/ her punctuality in the hospital (57.8%), his/ her punctuality during the clinical clerkship period (53%), and submitting morning reports were reported (51.8%). Low achievement rate was reported in the issues such as daily round cases and round quality (12%), employing applied topics in the class (9.6%) and class time table (3.23%). Education in emergency led to a rise in achieving educational goals in surgery clinical clerkship at Urmia University of Medical sciences (4). The Findings of this study are in line with those of this study. In the present study, increasing educational goals among students who knew about them before the clinical clerkship indicated that providing and introducing educational goals by instructors of the university and submitting them is important. These issues were also mentioned in a similar study in 2008 in Kermanshah (5). Thus, university instructors should pay special attention to this important educational principle. An interesting finding of the present study is the high achievement of educational goals by the students in winter. It seems that in this season instructors are fully present at their work place. The findings of this study also highlighted observing educational principles.