[Attitude of students toward their field of study and future career in Neyshabur University of medical sciences]

Introduction and Aims: The students as key elements of university make the main bodies of the various society organizations. Students' attitudes towards field of study and future career are one of the factors influencing on quality of educational services. Therefore this study was conducted with the aim of the survey of the students' attitude of the Neyshabur University of Medical Sciences toward their field of study and future career

Materials and Methods: This cross sectional study conducted in Feb 2012. The population of the study is comprised of all the students of the Neyshabur University of Medical Sciences. The data collection tool was a self-made questionnaire including 34 questions. Data were analyzed using Chi-square and Fisher's exact by SPSS v.16

Results: The student's average age was 20.54 +/- 1.24 and 61% of them were female. Average score of student's attitude towards field of study and future career estimated 44.18 +/- 5.96 and 46.85 +/- 1.93 respectively. Also in this study age of students has significant relationship with field of study [P=0.024] and future career [P=0.032]

Conclusion: According to the results, major of students have positive attitude towards their field of study and future career. People's complete familiarity with the academic fields and good counsel can play significant role for further strengthened attitudes

[Investigation of hearing loss and its related factors in Kerman truck drivers]

Background and Aims: noise is the third most dangerous pollutant in metropolises and is one of the most important risk factors in the transportation industry. This study was conducted with the aim of investigating truck drivers hearing loss and its effective factors

Methods: this cross-sectional study was conducted in 2011 in Kerman City on 150 professional truck drivers who had a dossier at the center of screening occupational diseases, and were chosen by stratified random sampling. Information was collected by a checklist including age, marital status, military services status, smoking status and audiometry done in the current year and were analyzed by using SPSS 18 using correlation, ANOVA, Paired t-test, McNemar's test and Adjusted Linear Regression

Results: the mean age of participants was 43.0+/-10.56 and in all frequencies a significant difference was found between the hearing threshold of drivers with different work experiences, and hearing loss increased with increase in work experience. Hearing loss increased significantly in all frequencies with age increase as well. Hearing loss in frequencies more than 2000 H was significantly more in the left ear than the right

Conclusion: although age increase is an important factor in hearing loss, but alone, it does not justify the asymmetric hearing loss at the quantities measured in the drivers in this study. It appears that driving due to constant exposure to noise can lead to hearing loss in drivers