Rehabilitation management curriculum’s educational needs assessment: a content analysis

Introduction: The rehabilitation management’s master science educational program has been revised many years ago, but due to time and technological changes, the review of this program seems necessary. Since the aim of study was a content analysis study to assess the educational needs of rehabilitation management’s educational program among students, graduates and professors of the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences in 2018. Methods: It was a conventional content analysis study. Data were gathered by semi structured interview with 15 rehabilitation management faculty members, students and graduates. The interviews were conducted with the permission of the participants to record and word-by-word writing and analyzed based on Graneheim content analysis method. Results: The findings included 628 open codes which were condensed to the 11 sub categories and 3 main categories. The three main categories included: "Policy review" with the subcategories: "Need assessment before curriculum development", "Focus on scientific advancement of graduates", "Integration of disabled people activities", "Strategic approach to research In this field" and “the necessity of redefining the reason for the existence of the major". Another main category was "Change in content" with the following sub-classes: "need to revisit the contents of the course", "attention to sociological characteristics", "the content of the curriculum is holistic" and the last main category was "Educational needs changing" with the subcategories "specialized education system", "attention to quality and quantity of education", "change in educational curriculum". Conclusion: The findings showed that the participants believed that the curriculum of rehabilitating management major should be review and revised in three categories  the policy and educational needs.