educational need assessments of employees affiliated to dezful university of medical sciences regarding in-service educational courses

background: in-service educational courses have made the organization employees more capable of solving problems, making decisions and analyzing the job. educational programs should be based on educational needs. so aim of present research was to determinate educational need assessments of employees affiliated to dezful university of medical sciences regarding in-service educational courses in 2012. methods : this descriptive-analytic study was carried out on 1800 participants affiliated to dezful university of medical sciences. there was a non-random and purposeful sampling.  data collection instrument was consisted of demographic information, special questions about the three studied domains of skills and administrative problems of the employees’ duties. content validity and test-re-test was performed to assess validity and reliability of the questionnaire. the data were analyzed by spss15.   findings: the results showed that the highest educational need was technical and operational skills with mean score of 4.18± 1.01 and the lowest educational need was theoretical and conceptual skills with mean score of 3.78± 0.89. the most educational need in technical and operational skills domain was related to employees in categories of treatment- health, in theoretical and conceptual skills domain was related to employees in categories of financial- administrative and in communication and human skills domain was related to employees in categories of treatment-health.   conclusion: technical and operational skills and daily needs of employees are the most important educational needs and educational planners need to consider these in their annual plan. key words : educational need assessments, in-service educational courses, educational skills