Medical and Dentistry Students’ Viewpoints about Physician-Scientists as their Basic Science Educators

Background and Objective: A growing concern has emerged that all is not completely well with undergraduate medical education in some parts of the world. An important neglected issue is about the basic science educators. We aimed to investigate the medical and dentistry students' viewpoints on basic science education by instructors with a background of medicine. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed on 205 medical and dentistry students studying in basic science stage (microbiology or biochemistry courses) in Mashhad, in 2014. Data was gathered with a questionnaire and was analyzed by SPSS 11.5. P<0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Results: A total of 120 (71.4%) medical students and 48 (28.6%) dentistry students returned the questionnaires. MD-PhD educators are needed in educational programs and their emphasis on important issues got the highest scores with no gender nor major difference (4.2±0.7 and 4.1±0.7, respectively). Total teaching and clinical based teaching scores were not different in two majors. However, more preference for clinically oriented teaching was found in females (p=0.02). Conclusion: This study highlights the medical students' preference for MD-PhD lecturers. This mainly stems from considering clinical aspects of the teaching topics.