Medical Tourism Attraction of Tehran Hospitals

Introduction: Today the market of medical tourism is growing as one of the competitive and profitable industries in the world. The aim of this study was to determine medical tourist attraction in Tehran hospitals. Methods: This is a descriptive study which was carried out in 8 hospitals of Tehran in 2012. 195 people from the managing boards of these hospitals participated in the study. A questionnaire was designed to gather data. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by professors and administrators and reliability was calculated 80% by Cronbach's alpha. The data was analyzed using SPSS. Findings: The total amount of medical tourist attractions in Tehran hospitals is moderate (51%) and also average number of foreign patients admitted to hospitals and average income for hospitals is also moderate. Conclusion: According to the results it seems media advertising is the most effective in attracting medical tourists. Furthermore, the advertisement of the capabilities of hospitals alongside marketing could help attract more medical tourists

Health Tourism in Iran; Identifying Obstacles for Development of This Industry

Medical tourism plays an important role in national revenue of many countries; This industry earns about 100 billion dollars for the governments each year. However, Tourism is not developed in Iran and it is in its initial paces. As a matter of fact, the Ministry of Health recognized tourism-therapy in 2003. In addition, by doing this, rather than supporting tourism-therapy, the ministry mainly tried to create new jobs for the graduates of medical sciences. However, tourism-therapy was introduced as an independent industry in 2004 by the merger The Cultural Heritage Organization to The Iran and World Tourism. According to the planning, the Iranian government has devised plans to cover 30% of medical and health needs of the country, by the end of 4th national development program, through exporting medical products and services. Therefore, determining the obstacles in the way of optimum development of tourism-therapy industry is of great help to the country

Physical environment, occupational conflict, and ambiguity of roles: Job stressors among nurses

Background and purpose: Providing health services in health centers is a challenging and risky&nbsp;job. So that, realization of quality, performance, efficiency, and fairness in the provision of such&nbsp;services needs a proper condition to ensure that the stress experienced by the personnel is&nbsp;minimized. The present study is a survey of the factors effective on job stress among the nurses&nbsp;working in the educational hospitals affiliated with Tehran Medical Science University, Iran. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted as a correlative work with a sample size of&nbsp;180 nurses. A researcher-designed questionnaire was used as data gathering tool. The validity of&nbsp;which was confirmed by the experts and its reliability was ascertained using Cronbach&rsquo;s alpha&nbsp;(&alpha = 0.92). The data were analyzed in SPSS using descriptive statistics such as central indices&nbsp;and inferential statistics including Pearson correlation coefficient. Results: Mean score of the physical environment (1.96), occupational conflict (1.97), and&nbsp;ambiguity of role (2.20) were less than the average score. In addition, there was a statistically&nbsp;significant relationship between physical environment, occupational conflict, and ambiguity of&nbsp;roles on one hand and the stress experienced by the nurses on the other hand (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Given the significant relationship between physical environment, occupational&nbsp;conflict, and ambiguity of roles on one hand and the nurse&rsquo;s stress, on the other hand,&nbsp;improvement of the environmental problem and assigning tasks that are more specific can be&nbsp;greatly helpful in improvement of the work condition