Effect of Ministry of Health and Medical Education structure on application of medical research

Integration of health services and medical education the brief manifest of Iran's Ministry of Health and Medical Education [MOHME]- has been studied mainly from the perspective of health service and medical education quality so far. The objective of present study however, is to examine the impact of integrated structure of MOHME on domestic research utilization. Macro-level policy makers in charge of designing the national research and innovation system are expected to benefit from the results of this study. The study was conducted inform of Grounded Theory and through interview's with a wide range of persons ranging from policy makers to healthcare providers in medical and non-medical groups. Integration' has not fully evolved yet. Beyond the structural changes that have been created at the higher levels of MOHME and medical universities, a set of processes should have been defined for attainment of the desired goals. Neither the created structural changes have covered the level of educational and research groups, nor the set of needed processes has been defined. The issue of inadequate research utilization is not limited to health sector, but is also present in other pillars of the national research and innovation system. From the perspective of health research, the national research and innovation system should be defined at the macro level before making any decisions about changing the current structures. The reason is that the main problems of the research system in Iran are not confined to medical sciences or the 'integration', but more general and drastic issues are existent. Any putative structural changes in the 'integration 'and medical sciences should be viewed only as secondary to these main issues

need to revise assessment criteria of academic board members:assessment of research based knowledge transfer in Tehran university of medical sciences

In the past two decades, scientific publications in Iran has considerably increased in the context of medical science and the number of articles published in ISI journals has doubled from 1997 to 2001. Along with this quantitative development, it is interesting to know whether the researches done have led to a change in service provision and an improvement in the health of the society eventually. The aim of the present study was to examine the behavior of researchers in Tehran University of Medical Sciences about knowledge transfer activities. The other question was which factors could affect the researchers' behavior of knowledge transfer. The samples of study were all Tehran University of Medical Sciences' research projects that had received grants from inside and outside the university in 1383, had registered their contracts, had been finished by the time this study was done [the second half of 1385] and their reports had been sent. of 315 research projects that possessed the inclusion criteria, 301 projects were examined and their respective checklists were completed. The researcher's questionnaire was sent to the principal investigators of the projects and eventually 208 questionnaires were collected. Researchers stated that their passive activities of knowledge transfer to be more in the field of publishing articles. The mean score for researchers' performance in this field was 27% of the total score. The mean score of the researchers' performance in [active] activities was 6% of the total score attainable. The review of 301 research proposals showed that the total cost of the projects under study was a little less than 12 trillion rials, whereas in only 20 projects [6.6%], part of the cost had been provided by organizations outside the university. Among these, only 7 cases [2.3%] had considered costs for research-based knowledge transfer. In spite of the present expectations of knowledge transfer in the world, many academicians still use the methods of research based knowledge dissemination and not implementation. So, if it is necessary to 'connect knowledge to practice', it is also necessary to introduce considerable changes in organizational procedures and encouragement policies [e.g. employment and promotion of academic members]. The organizations themselves need to show commitment to knowledge transfer too. This means that apart from creating the necessary motivation in researchers, methods of implementation such as securing the necessary funds as part of the expenses of research projects and also training of researchers should also be considered

[ evaluation on mercury concentration in the urine of Hamadan dentists with more than 4 years working experience]

Background and aim: in recent years, using dental amalgam because of its potential risk of mercury toxicity particularly for dental personal has become a great problem in dentistry. The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between practical indices and mercury levels in the urine of dentists with more than four years experience

Materials and Methods: thirty dentists filled a questionnaire including: duration of office experience, number of amalgam restorations, method of amalgam wastes removal, number of daily polished restorations, and the number of amalgam restored teeth in dentist's mouth. Thirty urine samples were collected from dentists and specific gravity of each urine sample was measured by a refractometer on the same day. After processing, mercury was collected from the upper layer of solution using potassium bromide and was measured by a spectro photometer [micro Hg/l] in 485nm. Then cratinin of each sample was also measured and mercury concentration was divided into cratinin concentration. Finally, the rate of urine mercury was reported in pgHg/gr cr. Data was analyzed by t-test, Pearson correlation coefficient and lined multi variable regression test

Results: mean value of urine mercury was 31.62 micro ghg/gr cr, which was less than threshold allowable level. Totally, 11 samples exceed the allowable levels. From practical indices: type of cleaning amalgam contaminated instruments, method of amalgam wastes removal and number of restorations were significantly related to urine mercury levels [P<0.05]

Conclusion: according to this study, the measured mercury level was less than TLV level. The most significant factor was the number of restorations