[Assessing clinic's panel of general practitioners in Qazvin]

This descriptive study was aimed to assess clinic's panels of the general practitioners and the compliance with the general standards and criteria on the clinic panels of 60 general practitioners in Qazvin city in 2009. Of the total, 30% of the physicians had written the title of "general practitioners" on their panels and 66/61% of them had written 3 special practicing fields such as internal diseases, pediatrics, dermatology, etc and 66/21% of them had written 4 special practicing fields on their panels. All of the panels had not Iranian medical council sign. Also all of the panels within the normal size 50x70 cm as standards and 66/86% of the panels had a white background. Owing to the misplacement of the general practitioners in medical service versus specialists in the health system dos not work, ignoring the effectiveness of their roles in the health care and the lack of awareness of the citizens can be the reasons for not writing the title of "general practitioners" on their panels and the use of special practicing field names

[Quality of life in cancer patients in Qazvin [2007]]

Cancer as a chronic disease with special treatment such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgery can affect patients both psychologically and physiologically complicating all aspects of patients' life. Thus, assessing the patients' quality of life for better care planning is of prime priority. To determine the level of quality of life in cancer patients considering the physiological, psychological, environmental, and social relation domains. This was a cross-sectional descriptive analytical study performed on 63 patients with cancer who were referred to oncology clinic of Kosar hospital in Qazvin during 2007. The patients were interviewed by the researchers using the Persian version of the world health organization quality of life [WHOQOL-BREF] questionnaire. Analysis of data were carried out using SPSS and descriptive statistics including the chi-square test, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficient and regression. Of total 63 patients, 41.3% were males and 58.7% females among those 33 between 40-60 year with 42 having an income of not more than $250 per month. Most patients [46%] were treated by surgical measures and chemotherapy and 93.7% with no knowledge about cancer. Among patients, 60.4% in physiological domain, 55.5% in psychological domain, and 66.7% in environmental health domain showed low and moderate levels of quality of life. In social domain, 71.5% were found to have high level quality of life. Also, the study demonstrated that there was a correlation between the patients' quality of life in physiological domain and the number of children while the duration of treatment was found to influence the other domains of quality of life. Considering the data of the present study, most patients were middle age, with low income, and unaware of their needs. Regarding the environmental health, psychological, and physiological domains, the patients were found to have low and moderate levels of quality of life. Hence the serious intervention by physicians, nurses, and health politician towards improving the patients' quality of life of prime necessity

Assessing the dental office sign of general dentists in Qazvin

This descriptive study was aimed at assessing the dental office sign of general dentists and compliance with the general standards and criteria. A total of 73 signs from clinics of general dentists in the city of Qazvin [Iran] were examined in 2009. Of 73 signs, 5.47% showed the title of [general dentist], 43.83% displaying the practice of a dental specialty such as surgery, dental prosthesis, pediatric dentistry, and 20.54% demonstrating the practice of four different dental specialties. There was no sign showing the logo of the Iranian Medical Council. However, 97% of the signs were within the standard size of 50x70 cm and 89% with a white background. It seems that the lack of public awareness over the availability of different dental specialties and the distinction between the dental specialists and general dentists, to be among the reasons encouraging the dental practitioners to avoid including the title of [general dentist] on their dental clinics' signs