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com (2013) Copyright ORIC Publications

Medical Sciences and Public Health

Vol. 1, No. 1 (2013), 711
ORICPublications
www.oricpub.com Journal Homepage: http://www.oricpub.com/j-med-sci-pub-health

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF MEDICAL EDUCATION MASTER PROGRAM ON GRADUATES' PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCIES AND PERFORMANCE
Saeideh Ghaffarifar1, Abolghasem Amini1, Fathieh Mortazavi 2, Javad Kompani Mohammadi1 1 Medical Education Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran 2 EDC, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Abstract Purpose of the article: To evaluate the effectiveness of medical education master program on graduates' professional competencies and performance on their own perspectives. Methods: In this Descriptive Cross-Sectional Research, 48 out of 73 graduates completed the researcher made validated and reliable questionnaire. The data were analyzed using SPSS .16. Results: Graduates including 21 male (43.8%) and 27 female (56.2%) with a mean age of 37 6.53 years scored their professional competency and performance 3.21 0.52 and 56.44 7.60, respectively in the ranges of 1-5 and 16-80.Conclusions: Graduates intermediate competency and performance are mainly attributed to the lack of codes of ethics and responsibilities for medical education master program, not completing their log-books and analyze students reflections. Recommendations: design future studies with larger samples and developing evaluation tool guided by models like PRECEDE PROCEED.

Received: 20 Mar2013 Accepted: 07 Apr 2013

Keywords: Graduate, Medical Education Competency Professional Performance

1. INTRODUCTION In the decade of human resources for health, [1] the felt need for foundation of new methods to promote the medical education system[2]; develop the process of recruiting and employing of graduates of medical education[3] ; lack of information and documentation regarding the status of medical education graduates in Iran, and considering their perspectives as a simple, easy , fast and affordable source for initial diagnosis in future need assessments conveyed us to evaluate the effectiveness of MSc program of medical education on graduates professional competence and performance from their own points of view. 2. MATERIALS AND METHODS In this descriptive cross-sectional research in 2011, literature review [4-10] gave us a bank of 59 items which previously were used to measure the performance of medical professionals. Of those, 25 items that could be used to measure the learners performance on their own points of view were selected.

Correspondence:

Saeideh Ghaffarifar
Medical Education Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran

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Thanks to valuable comments of 14 experts of medical education, and after psychometric and exploratory factor analysis [11-15], the final version of the researcher made questionnaire with 16 items became ready to evaluate medical education graduates performance. The psychometric process of the research tools has been published in another article [16]Valid and reliable questionnaire was sent by e-mail to all 73 graduates of medical education master program in Iran .After repeated follow-up reminders, 48 graduates participated in the project on their own willingness. The graduates were asked to score their professional performance on each of 16 items on a 5 point Likert scale. Graduates performance scores were calculated in a range from 16 to 80.According to the recently revised curriculum of master program of medical education in Iran, professional competence of graduates was set at 7 items. They scored their competency in any of the 7 items in a range of 1 to 4. The mean score of those 7 items was considered as their overall competency score. Regardless of any specific item, participants were asked to score their overall competency in a range from 0 -20 and to assess the overall impact of master program of medical education on their professional competency and performance at a 4-fold levels. The data obtained from completed questionnaires by 48 graduates were analyzed using SPSS .16 (Response Rate=65.7%). 3. RESULTS Graduates including 21 male (43.8%) and 27 female (56.2%) with a mean age of 37 6.53 years scored their overall competency as being 16 1.62 in a range from 0 -20. When starting the medical education master program, 14 (29.2%) participants had bachelor degree, 28 of them (58.3%) were medical doctors, and 3 (6.2%) had a PhD.The mean score of graduates performance was 56.44 7.60 in a range of 16-80. (Figure 1)

Figure 1. The effectiveness of the Medical Education program on masters' performance their own points of view

Figure 2. The effectiveness of the Medical Education program on masters' professional competence on their own points of view

The mean score of graduates professional competence was 3.21 0.52 in a range of 1-5. (Figure 2)Twenty graduates (41.3%) assessed the overall impact of master program of medical education on their professional competency and performance at the level of high. (Table 1)

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The Effectiveness Of Medical Education Master Program On Graduates' Professional Competencies And Performance

Table 1. The overall effect of the medical education program on masters professional competence on their own points of view Overall Effect Number Percent (%) Female No Effect 0 0 Low 8 29.62 Moderate 13 48.14 High 6 22.22 Male No Effect 2 9.52 Low 8 38.09 Moderate 7 33.33 High 4 19.04

The Pearson correlation test to examine the relationship between the normally distributed variables of competency and performance did report a none-significant relationship between the two. (r=0.293, Sig.2-tailed=o51). Partial correlation test showed the relationship between performance and competency score became weaker than before under the influence of the control variables of age, previous educational work experience and their previous academic degree. 4. CONCLUSION In this study graduates performance and competence was in an intermediate level, and 41.7% of graduates were sufficiently satisfied with their competence. These findings in concordance with others [10,17, 18] emphasize on a needs assessment to determine the important factors affecting graduates real performance in their real work places. In other words, researches based on the models like PRECEDE- PROCEED should be conducted in order to develop medical education curriculum and improve graduates' competence and performance .Because we believe that the results from graduates perspectives on the effectiveness of the medical education program on their overall performance and competence could be one of the predictors of their self esteem, stress and anxiety in the transition from studying to working time, and graduates perceived readiness have an important impact on their behavior during the early years after graduation. We strongly recommend conducting future researches to confirm the results of this study with the use of other complementary assessment methods like tutor reports, portfolios, simulations, objective standard clinical examinations, and students reflexions[19-23] to acquire more reliable results. Low number of medical education graduates in Iran at the time of the study was an inevitable limitation in our study in addition to not high participation of the graduates and the graduates blamed depressed demands of education system for applying their professional competencies to their lower rate of participation. Lots of other studies of medical education had the similar findings of us [4,20,24,25]. It will be possible to transfer the concern of medical education masters professional competence and performance from minds to the hearts and behaviors[26], if we try to: develop codes of ethics and responsibilities for medical education masters ; include the Internship in their curriculum ; ask students to complete the log-books and analyze their reflections ; provide constructive feedbacks on their assignments ; revise students early admission criteria to provide opportunities for studying in the various sub-disciplines of the field of medical education in compliance with their specific fields of interest and previous working experience; and design a problem-based learning curriculum. Recommendations Researches with larger sample sizes, greater involvement of participants are necessary. Besides, the effects of each of the components of the medical education program (whether those of input,

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context, process or output) on graduates professional performance and competence should be elaborated instead of its main impacts and outcomes. Future studies could examine the effects of each of the controlling variables of graduates age, their previous educational work experience and academic degree on the relationship between performance and competency scores. Acknowledgements Our Special thanks go to medical education research center in Tabriz University of medical sciences for funding the project. REFERENCES [1] [2] [3] [4] Chen, L., et al.(2004). Human resources for health: overcoming the crisis. Lancet. 364(9449): p. 1984. Whitcomb, M.E.(2005).Medical professionalism: can it be taught? Academic Medicine.. 80(10): p. 883-884. Walker, A., et al.(2012).Work readiness of graduate health professionals. Nurse education today. Billings, M.E., J.R. Curtis, and R.A. Engelberg,(2011). Residents' Perceptions of Their Competence in End-of-Life Care: Suggestions for Further Research. Academic Medicine. 86(1): p. 5. Chiru, C., et al.(2012). A Cross Country Study on University Graduates Key Competencies. An Employers Perspective. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences. 46: p. 4258-4262. Cohen, R., et al.(2005). An update on master's degrees in medical education. Medical Teacher.27(8): p. 686-692. Davis, D.A., et al.(2006). Accuracy of physician self-assessment compared with observed measures of competence. JAMA: the journal of the American Medical Association. 296(9): p. 1094-1102. Ferguson, E., D. James, and L. Madeley.(2002). Factors associated with success in medical school: systematic review of the literature. BMJ. 324(7343): p. 952. Huddle, T.S.(2005). Viewpoint:: Teaching Professionalism: Is Medical Morality a Competency? Academic Medicine . 80(10): p. 885. Lenburg, C.B., et al.(2011). Implementing the COPA model in nursing education and practice settings: promoting competence, quality care, and patient safety. Nursing education perspectives. 32(5): p. 290-296. Grant, J.S. and L.L. Davis.(1998). Selection and use of content experts for instrument development. Research in nursing & health. 20(3): p. 269-274. Liou, S.R.(2011). Psychometric Properties of the Clinical Competence Questionnaire. Morris, M.C., T.K. Gallagher, and P.F. Ridgway.(2012). Tools used to assess medical students competence in procedural skills at the end of a primary medical degree: a systematic review. Medical Education Online. 17. Rubio, D.M.G., et al.(2003). Objectifying content validity: Conducting a content validity study in social work research. Social Work Research. 27(2): p. 94-104. Thurstone, L.L.(1947).Multiple factor analysis. Ghaffarifar, S., et al.( 2012).How masters of medical education program could be evaluated in their working setting.1(3): pp. 66-70. Cave, J., et al.(2007). Newly qualified doctors' views about whether their medical school had trained them well: questionnaire surveys. BMC medical education. 7(1): p. 38. Scholz, U., et al.(2002). Is general self-efficacy a universal construct? Psychometric findings from 25 countries. European journal of psychological assessment. 18(3): p. 242.

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Please cite this article as: S. Ghaffarifar , A. Amini, F. Mortazavi , J. K. Mohammadi, (2013), The Effectiveness Of Medical Education Master Program On Graduates' Professional Competencies And Performance, Medical Sciences and Public Health, Vol. 1(1), 7-11.