assessing medical interns' attitude to general practitioner thesis & its performance challenges in mazandran university of medical sciences

background and purpose: the thesis provides an opportunity for the students to conduct a study and thus to get ready for future research cases. medical students have faced numerous challenges for their thesis including the selection of the subject, the study approval, equipment and supplies shortage and etc. we have conducted the present study to determine the attitude of medical interns towards the challenges they encounter when performing their thesis study in mazandran medial sciences university in 2010. methods: this is a descriptive study on 96 medical interns of medical school. data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire about demographic characteristics, the students' status, thesis and their attitude towards challenges they encountered when conducting it. results: 40.6% of the medical interns in our study confirmed the necessity of thesis for general medicine program. the students (44.8% of the study units) agreed with the thesis being necessary for a general medicine program it is best to offer it during the final 2-3 years of the program. the most important challenges were lengthy bureaucratic procedure and lack of organization among different levels of decision-making in order to approve the thesis. 34.4% of the students relatively believed that the supervising and consulting professors spend enough time on guiding and supervising the students. conclusions: it is necessary to reconsider the onset, the approval procedure, as well as the regular supervision of its progress.