Curriculum evaluation of nursing education in Iran

The purpose of this thesis is to clarify different aspects of the nursing curriculum from lecturers' and students' points of view in Iran. The evaluation employed a triangulation technique in order to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the nursing programme and to provide explanations for its successes and failures. In addition, it attempts to find whether there was any relationship between the characteristics of the respondents and their evaluation of the curriculum. The thesis begins with an introduction to the research. The general policy of The Ministry of Health in nursing education and also the main problems which the students and the teaching staff are confronted with, and the deficiencies of facilities are clarified as background to the research. After describing the main features of the nursing curriculum, some critical issues in nursing education are reviewed. At first, investigations on the nursing curriculum in general are analysed and then nursing research on a particular course of a component of the nursing curriculum is described. The conceptual framework of the research explores different concepts of curriculum and its evaluation. Methodological issues and the findings of the research are also presented in detail. In order to make inferences about the characteristics of the lecturer and student populations from the characteristics of the samples drawn from these populations, inferential statistics are applied. The most important findings of this study fall into three categories: The different components of the curriculum from viewpoints of the lecturers and students were: - Goal: ambiguous from the respondents' viewpoints; - Content: acceptable from the respondents' viewpoints: - Methodology: controversial. Lecturers were critical of the teaching methods. On the other hand, they were acceptable to the students; - Evaluation: controversial. Assessment approaches of the individuals were acceptable to the lecturers but not acceptable to the students; There was no common viewpoint among the respondents about the nursing components of the curriculum. None of the respondents' characteristics had a statistical significant relationship with their perceptions about evaluation of the nursing curriculum

Coping With Acquired Immune Deficiency Infection: A Phenomenological Study

Introduction: The epidemic of HIV infection is a serious health problem with major effects on people’s lives. It is essential to comprehend the lived experience of life with HIV. Therefore, the present research was conducted for a better understanding of the meaning and nature of life with this phenomenon. Method: This qualitative study was conducted using an interpretative, phenomenological approach. 19 HIV-infected patients were coosen by purposive sampling method. Audio-taped, indepth, and semi-structured interviews and field notes were used for data collection. All the interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed by using the hermeneutic approach developed by Diekelmann. Results: According to the findings, the 19 participants were between 21-56 years of age in 47.4% CD4 count was under or equal to 200 cells/mm3 and the others were in an earlier phase of HIV infection. The main themes were beliefs and time, other HIV patients, inconsistencies in coping, and fighting and struggling. Conclusion: People with HIV/AIDS diagnosis face many challenges in different aspects of their lives. Some can not cope with their new situation effectively and may be threatening to both their own and others people’s lives. Understanding these patients' experiences and explaining the positive experinces to other patients, and giving them support and guidance is suggested to care givers. Keywords: HIV/AIDS, Lived experience, Coping, Phenomenolog