Research priorities in medical education at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences: categories and subcategories in the Iranian context

Introduction: Research in education is a globally significant issuewithout a long history. Due to the importance of the issue in HealthSystem Development programs, this study intended to determineresearch priorities in medical education, considering their detailsand functions. By determining barriers existing in research ineducation progress, it is tried to make research priorities morefunctional by recommending acceptable strategies.Methods: This is a qualitative-descriptive study in two descriptivephases. The goal of these phases was to determine researchpriorities subcategories in medical education by Nominal GroupTechnique (NGT) and two rounds of Delphi method. Through thefirst phase, subcategories of research priorities were determined,using Nominal Group Technique under medical education experts’supervision. Through two rounds of Delphi, a questionnaire wasconstructed based on the subcategories. Eventually, researchpriorities were determined based on their highest score (scoresmore than 7 out of 10).Results: In the first phase (NGT), 35 priorities in 5 major fieldsof medical education were presented. In the second phase,priorities were scored, using Delphi method. Medical Ethicsand professionalism gained the highest scores (7.63±1.26) andeducational evaluation the lowest (7.28±1.52). In this stage, 7items were omitted but 2 of them were added again after experts’revision in the third round of Delphi.Conclusion: According to the results of the present study andbased on previous studies, it really seems that the fields of“Learning and Teaching Approaches” and “Medical Ethics andProfessionalism” were more important. Because of financial andresource limitations in our country and the importance of researchpriorities, it is recommended to frequently study “researchpriorities determination program” at universities.Keywords: Research priorities; Medical education; Delphi method