Evaluation of a Continuous Educational Program for Urinary Stones

Considering the significance of continuous medical education and its role in the quality of the presented health and treatment services, and the holding of more than 3000 of such programs, this study was carried out to determine the effect of continuous medical educational program regarding renal stones during the years 1997-1998. In this study, the educational trial strategy was carried out on 100 physicians having their offices in Tehran. In this respect, the effect of training was evaluated on the knowledge, perspective, and way of management of physicians before and after stone ejection, renal colic pain, and its diagnosis. For this purpose, the trained medical students as false patients ( one week before and two months after the program) referred to the offices. The level of knowledge was measured using a 29-item and four-choice questionnaire. For perspective, a 10-item questionnaire was used according to Likert score. The influence of programs was assessed by McNemars, Sign, and Chi-square tests. Out of I 00 studied patients, the data was complete only for 80 ones. In this respect, 19 (24%) were female and 61 (76%) were male at an age range of 43.2 ± 12.5 years and a period of 14.5 ± 11.9 years has passed from their graduation. It was shown that the training program was successful in improvement of knowledge and perspective, even for the total period of the study (P<0.001). In addition, only the way of management showed a significant and successful improvement. In this regard, the serum administration had been reduced significantly (P<0.01) in patients with colic pain. It is concluded that the contents of training programs in proportion to the requirements can upgrade the knowledge and perspective and in this way can affect the efficiency of physicians and other methods should be applied for alteration of behavior.