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Background: Identifying the problems which exist in clinical education and setting to solve them will lead to the improvement of quality of medical care services. This study was conducted to fulfill this goal. Materials and Methods: In this descriptive–analytic research which was carried out in 2008, the views of the medical trainees and interns, who had at least gone through two major clinical courses at Arak University of Medical Sciences, about the obstacles of clinical education were evaluated. For achieving this purpose, a questionnaire containing 56 questions on 6 problem areas including clinical education spaces, educational facilities, cooperation of health and treatment personnel, clinical assessment and teaching methods, and clinical curriculum design methods was administered. Results: The quality of clinical education in the view of 41% of medical trainees and 48% of interns was seen to be at an average level. Assessment methods of clinical education, on the other hand, were rated as weak by 28.7% of trainees and 32% of interns. Also, 29.3% of trainees and 31.7% of interns evaluated the use of educational spaces to be at a weak level. Additionally, the quality of clinical teaching methods, educational facilities, cooperation of health and treatment personnel, and the design of clinical curriculum were seen at an average level. Conclusion: This study highlighted the importance of determining learning experiences, applying proper teaching methods, conducting continuous generative evaluations, using simulated environments and educational spaces congruent with graduates’ future employment opportunities, and enhancing students’ level of motivation, as effective strategies for the improvement of the quality of medical education.

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Introduction: Prayer is one of the most important manifestations of the spirit of monotheism in life. Despite the importance of prayer in life, it seems that according to the number of students in Arak University of Medical Sciences, their participation in congregational prayer is not very strong. Therefore, this study was conducted with the aim of explaining the obstacles to participating in congregational prayers from the perspective of Arak University of Medical Sciences students.
Methods: This study is a qualitative research in which data collection was conducted by a trained and informed researcher in a semi-structured manner using a number of guiding questions. Ten students with different academic backgrounds participated in this study. After obtaining consent from the participants to record the interview, they were asked to describe the personal, family, cultural, social, political, and educational challenges of participating in congregational prayers. After the data reached saturation and the researchers realized that no new data was obtained, they terminated the interviews and proceeded to transcribed the interview transcripts. After transcoding, data analysis was performed using content analysis and main concepts were extracted. Qualitative content analysis, which is a common method in qualitative studies, was used in this study. A conventional approach was used to analyze the data.
Results: In this study, 10 students from different fields of study (nursing, medicine, radiotherapy, midwifery, anesthesia, surgical technology, nutrition, laboratory science, occupational health) with an average age of 20.6 years participated, of which 5 were male and the rest were female. After analyzing the interviews, a total of 232 codes, 11 subcategories and 2 main categories were obtained, barriers (environmental, nature of congregational prayer, media, cognitive, political, health, welfare, individual and family, cultural and religious) and facilitators (individual characteristics, personality characteristics of the imam).
Conclusions: According to the results of this study, by removing the interference between the time of the educational classes and the time of the congregational prayer, expanding the cultural activities of the cultural affairs trustees of the university in order to explain the place of prayer to the students, providing a suitable environment to increase the attendance of officials, professors and Faculty staff, finding ways to increase motivation in graduate students, using continuous religious propaganda at the university level, and encouraging and appreciating active students and staff in performing this divine duty can have a significant impact on the establishment of congregational prayers.