Assessment of Ambulatory Education from Interns’ Viewpoints at the Teaching Hospital of Qazvin University of Medical Sciences in 2019

Considering that ambulatory education as one of the types of clinical education plays a vital role in acquiring students' competency also the importance of the learner’s perspective as a stakeholder of ambulatory education, the present study aims to assess the status of ambulatory education in the educational departments of the Qazvin University of Medical Sciences (QUMS) from the interns' perspective.

This was a cross-sectional study conducted in 2019. This study collected viewpoints of all 50 interns of QUMS who had completed Ambulatory clinics in 8 wards (internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, gynecology, psychiatry, infectious diseases, dermatology, and ENT) by Ambulatory Care Learning Education Environment Measure (ACLEEM) validated questionnaire. The data were analyzed in SPSS-21 using descriptive and analytical statistics at a significance level of less than 0.05.

Among the 50 interns participating in the present study, the majority (66%) of them were women. A total of 80% of them were single. Their mean age was 25.6 ± 2.14. The average total score of ACLEEM questionnaire in all educational sections was 110.5 which was reported in the desired classification. Among the 8 educational sections evaluated in the current study, the status of 6 educational sections was reported to be favorable.

Despite some shortcomings and weaknesses, ambulatory teaching in the departments of QUMS seems to be favorable from the perspective of interns. It is recommended that further studies be conducted at QUMS to evaluate the quality of ambulatory education from the perspective of clerkship and faculty members.