Internal Assessment of Nursing and Midwifery School of Amol (solar year 1390)

Abstract

Educational assessment is an official activity that is done for determining quality, effect or value of a program, process, or goal (1). The major purpose of educational assessment is to determine the value of the underassessment phenomenon so that it can help the interested and responsible people to make correct decisions about that phenomenon. Educational assessment is the best criteria of accessibility of educational goals which analyzes the educational activities of university and logical results could be achieved based on it (2). Assessment patterns of educational system are a lot with different viewpoints among which the credit of the part which is used as a known tool in famous universities is of prime importance and the usage of this pattern in various countries are classified to two which are 1-external assessment and 2- internal assessment. In external assessment usually people outside the organization are used and in internal assessment which is considered as the first step of using accreditation pattern (3) employees in the same group determine the deficiencies and lacks of the group by getting essential documents and information and analyzing them. One of the important developments in assessment in the two previous decades especially in universities has been moving from external assessment toward internal; assessment (4). Internal assessment provides a condition which pictures the educational quality and enables the organization to try to reach long term goals and facilititated the way to plan a development schedule in the organization (5). The main pre-requisite of internal assessment is the tendency of the university system toward this issue (3). The usage of internal assessment in medical education system is especially important as this system has to train efficient and qualified workforce for treatment health care field, therefore research and educational quality specially in this system which deals with human's health directly have to be assessed. Shortcomings can be discovered in different stages by assessment and changes can be applied for reaching the goals (6). A lot of countries have conducted studies for improving the quality of higher education and studying the accessibility of purposes of university systems. These universities include State University of New York (5), New Castle University (7) and Beirut American University (8). Such a need has been felt in Iran since the previous decade and universities and various researchers have started assessment in different education departments (2,3,9,10). In this manner departments of nursing (11), gynecology (12), microbes, parasites, and immunology (13), environmental health (14), and speech therapy of Semnan Univerisity of Medical sciences have got their strengths and weaknesses by internal assessment and besides determining the quality of research and education have submitted some solutions for improvement. Also internal surgery department of Rafsanjan university of medical sciences (3) psycho and societal health nursing of Gonabad university of medical sciences (4) and nursing and midwifery school of Tehran university of medical sciences (11) and a lot more other educational departments of different universities of the country while doing internal assessment valued the quality of assessment factors and identified the condition of different aspects Internal assessment is one of the first steps of educational assessment. According to the importance of quality in educational programs, this study was conducted for internal assessment of Hazrat Zeinab Nursing and Midwifery School of Amol. Methods: In this descriptive study, Nursing and Midwifery School of Amol was assessed internally. Participants included faculty members, managers, nursing students, supportive forces, documents and sources related to this school which were selected consecutively and based on purpose. Data collection was done by questionnaire and checklist through observance, question plan and vote accumulation through group discussion. Collected data was analyzed by descriptive statistics. Results: Results of this study showed that 86.44% of learning/ teaching strategies, 77.26% of educational equipment and facilities, and 72.61% of educational courses and course related or non-course related curricula were in a favorable condition and 64.32% of faculty member factors, 64.69% of tasks, purposes and organization rank, 59.76% of students, 41.55% of theses, sabbatical courses and seminars and 39.28% of the learners were in a rather favorable condition. Conclusions: Based on the achieved results this school is totally in rather favorable condition from the point of studied factors therefore officials, people in charge, and principals of university have to improve the strong points by accurate planning, and allocation of the resources to day by day increasing improvement and they have to remove the shortcoming so that they will reach their main purpose which is developing the quality of education.