Influence of Course Teaching of Life Skills on College Freshmen's Knowledge and Attitude to Life Skills and Improving their Psychosocial Capabilities

Students at university are always exposed to a lot of psychological problems during their education due to experiencing new problems and different stresses. Thus, teaching life skills was added to medical and midwifery freshmen’s curriculum for the first time in Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences, in 2006.This study was performed to evaluate the efficacy of the aforementioned program on the student’s knowledge and attitude to life skills and their psychosocial capabilities improvement. In this quasi-experimental study, cases were 51 medical and midwifery freshmen and control group included 42 medical and midwifery students who were in their second semester. Data was collected using a questionnaire which its validity and reliability were confirmed. The mean scores of the students’ knowledge and attitude increased significantly in cases in comparison to controls (7.19 in contrast to 4.66, P=0.0001 and 8.74 in contrast to 5.90, P=0.0001 respectively). According to two way ANOVA, field of study did not influence on the efficacy of education regarding students’ knowledge and attitude. Mean score of psychosocial capabilities increased significantly only in cases of midwifery group compared to their control group (24.75 in contrast to 20.14 with p=0.0001) Teaching life skills to students in a systematic and organized way, in a form of single unit course, had a significant effect on improvement of students’ knowledge and attitude to life skills, and psychosocial capabilities. It is obvious that education should continue for at least one year in order to have constant results.