Development Strategies in Medical Education

Introduction: Clinical education plays an important role in medical education, in which students learn new skills and obtain knowledge of their usage in patients. Log book, as an evaluation tool, can be used to improve the clinical education levels as well as educational planning and evaluation process. Since there is no study about the usage of log book in clinical education of physiotherapy students in Iran, and due to the incomplete studies on log book usage in other disciplines, our study aimed at using log book in clinical education of physiotherapy students with the emphasis on the content of log book.

Methods: Twenty four undergraduate semester 7 physiotherapy students, who have already experienced the routine clinical education, were selected using convenience sampling. The students were allocated randomly into 4 clinical education centers affiliated with the Faculty of Rehabilitation. They were educated and evaluated for the whole semester by using log book. A valid and reliable written questioner in different educational domain was used for analysis.

Results: In this preliminary study, our finding following the intervention (log book) demonstrated descriptively. The study results showed that among 23 analyzed educational items, the students’ most satisfactions by using log book obtained from the education of physiotherapy recording manner, documentation of experience and their possible comparison in different semesters, improvement of self-evaluation spirit, and systematic recording of educational tasks.

Conclusion: Log book in clinical education of physiotherapy students can be used as an effective tool in improvement of the quality of clinical education.