[Effect of a family-centered problem solving education method on self-esteem in drug-users]

Introduction: Drug addiction is amongst current crisis of the world including nuclear crisis, environmental degradation, poverty, and social crisis. Drug addiction is a major health problem in many countries worldwide. One of the most common characteristics of addicted individuals is low self-esteem. Self-esteem increases flexibility and reinforces progression of positive attitudes toward self-sufficiency. There are limited studies on non-medical treatment strategies for drug-users. The aim of the present study was to assess the effects of a family-centered problem solving education on self-esteem of drug-users

Methods: This study had a pretest-post test experimental design. First, validity and reliability [r=0.85] of the self-esteem Cooper-Smith questionnaire was confirmed. After completing the consent forms by the participant [n=60], they were randomly assigned into two equal experimental and control groups. At baseline, questionnaires were completed. The education was performed using family-centered problem solving teaching method in a two months period within eight 45-minute sessions in the intervention group. The Cooper smith self-esteem questionnaire was completed at the follow up

Results: The paired t-test showed that family-centered problem solving education method led to a significant increase [p=0.001] on the self-esteem scores in the intervention group. Although self-esteem scores of the control group increased significantly either after two months, the increase was 4.5 times more in the intervention group

Conclusion: To sum up, using the family-centered problem solving education method with family centered approach could improve the process of addiction treatment in addiction clinics

[ effect of video-based instruction versus demonstration on learning of clinical skills]

Background and Objective: one of the most important principles in education is adopting a teaching method in concordance with objectives, contents and learners. Teaching and learning clinical skills is a challenging aspect of education in field of medicine and allied health profession. Some of the new researchers have shown that video-based instruction has many advantages in comparative to others. But in the domain of the psychomotor learning there is not enough evidence to show that video-based instruction is an effective teaching method. The current study has compared students learning in video-based and demonstration methods

Materials and Methods: an experimental study was conducted on 40 first year nursing and midwifery students. The students were randomly assigned to case [N=20] and control [N=20] groups based on the their course. The data were collected from a pre-test, a post-test and a questionnaire for demographic information. Pre-test was given 24 hours prior to the presentation sessions. Then each group has received one skill with video-based and another skill with demonstration. Skills included the dressing changing and surgical hand washing. After 24 hours post-test was taken with previous criteria. The differences between the pre-test and post-test scores were considered as they are at learning level

Results: the overall learning in the demonstration method was higher than the video-based method [P<0.05]. However the scores of students in 2 methods was at acceptable level. The scores of students in the cognitive domain of hand washing by the demonstration were 16.20+/-1.5 and by the video-based method were 15.25+/-1. The scores of students in the psychomotor domain of hand washing by the demonstration was 16.85+/-1.4 and by the video-based method was 15.94+/-1.4 [P<0.05]. The scores of students in the cognitive domain of dressing change by the demonstration was 25.60+/-1.8 and by the video-based method was 15.50+/-1. The scores of students in the psychomotor domain of dressing change by the demonstration was 16.78+/-1.3 and with the video-based was 16.12+/-1 [P<0.05]

Conclusion: the results indicated that demonstration method is more effective in the students learning. However, both video-based and demonstration have led to the high level of cognitive and psychomotor learning. It could be concluded that video-based instruction can be an effective method for replacing the demonstration, especially when there is not access to demonstration, in addition according to the findings, video-based education is a effective methods for transporting knowledge, information and other topics in the cognitive domain. Therefore, considering the cost-effectiveness of video-based instruction and its ease of use, this method can facilitate education in where lack of experienced instructors and equipment is most pronounced