Program Evaluation of Health Care Management: Is it adjusted for Students Needs?

Abstract

Problem statement: Since improving the quality of high education is the final purpose of educational evaluation and an internal evaluation can make it possible to judge the quality of high education and achieve the goal of educational systems, in this study an internal evaluation in health care management department of Allied Medical Sciences Faculty of Tehran University of Medical Sciences, which is responsible for training health care management Students, was conducted. Approach: The study was a descriptive and cross-sectional one which was done in an applied manner in health care management department in 2006. The participants in the study included the manager of the department, the members of evaluation committee (3 people), Faculty board members (5 people), all the students, graduate students (20 people) and four experts. Nine questions were the tool used in the study. The questions were approved, considering reliability and validity, by means of the internal evaluation software of ministry of health, treatment and medical education. Regarding final approvement, 85- percent Cronoch’s alpha was obtained. To score the questions in the questionnaire, the researchers used likert choice scale (from completely undesirable to completely desirable). At the end, the data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and SPSS software. Results: Findings indicated that the faculty board members had the highest utility (70%) and the research factor the lowest (36.6%). Conclusion: Considering the factors evaluated, the utility of the department under study was rather high. The SWOT analysis shows that the department can obtain higher scores in later evaluations.