ABSTRACT
Background and Aim: Management of patients with outpatient diseases is the most important part of general practitioners working environment in future. The present study aimed at evaluating medicalinterns and graduates' self-assessment regarding their attitude about children outpatients in pediatric ward
Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional and descriptive study 40 medical interns. and 20 medical graduates were selected as samples in 2013 and their attitude about quality and effectiveness of pediatric ward education was evaluated through their self-assessment by means of a researcher-designed questionnaire based on Likert scale. Mean attitude points of the subjects in three domains of diagnosis, treatment, and prescription of drugs regarding four groups of diseases including microbial diseases, parasitic diseases, neonatal diseases, and malnutrition were accounted
Finally, the obtained data was fed into SPSS [V :11.5] software and and was analyzed using independent Ttest at the significant level of ?lpha=0.05
Results: The medical graduates' attitude scores in the three domains of diagnosis, treatment, and prescription were 3.2.+/-0.27 , 3.21+/-0.30, and 3.06+/-0.37; and those of medical interns were 3.44+/-0.58 ,3.21+/-0.55 , and 2.97+/-0.59, respectively
The highest and lowest attitude mean scores of both groups in all of the three domains belonged to neonatal disorders and parasitic diseases. Mean attitude scores of the two groups in the three mentioned domains were not significantly different
Conclusion: The intern' self-assessment scores of attitude about children outpatients were not at a high level; and they did not increase parallel to working experience. Thus, improving clinical education is the main solution of the problem