Assessment of students' perspectives about master of public health program in medical school of Shiraz University.

INTRODUCTION: Integration of public health and medical education has been thought to have an important role in medical students' training. Shiraz University of Medical Sciences has developed an MD/MPH dual degree educational program for the talented volunteer students. The aim of this study was to assess the students' viewpoints about various aspects of Shiraz MD/MPH program.

METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted on Shiraz undergraduate medical students, who were enrolled in MD/MPH program. A self-structured questionnaire in Persian consisting of 4 parts was used; it included demographic factors including 16 questions which evaluated the students' perspective of the goals, content, skill development, applicability and meeting their expectations; 7 questions evaluating the self-reported increase of knowledge; and 3 multiple choice questions to assess the students' motivations and opinions on the impact of the program on their future career. Descriptive statistics was used for data analysis.

RESULTS: All MD/MPH students (89) with a mean age of 21.4±1.34 participated in this study. Forty one of the students (46.1%) were male and 48 (53.9%) female. Overall, 86.1% of them had positive views about the goals of the program; also, 83.5%, 81.2% and 81.9% of them reported a positive viewpoint about the contents, the applicability and development of specific skills, and meeting their expectations, respectively. The students' most frequent motivation was "learning how to research systematically" (73%). The majority of the students reported this program to be moderately to highly effective in increasing their knowledge in the provided courses.

CONCLUSION: The students had a positive view about almost all of the aspects of the MD/MPH program; this may be indicative of the program being successful in delivering the goals, increasing the students' knowledge and skills, and meeting their expectations to date. Students' enthusiasm for the educational program may lead to their motivation for better learning and thus in the program's success.