BASIC SCIENCE COURSES IN UNDERGRADUATE NURSING CURRICULUM

Background and aim: Curriculum is the most important element in education that should be considered in universities. The purpose of nursing education is to ensure professional clinical competencies and to enhance the quality of nursing care. It is now accepted that the information relevant to nursing education doubles every 5 years, which underscores the need to change curricula regularly to keep up with the latest developments. Nursing education programs are now expected to enable students to practice as health care professionals. Basic sciences are important topics providing scientific underpinning for nursing care, but teaching them within nursing curriculum has long been identified as a problem and source of anxiety by instructors as well as students and even practising nurses. These subjects are perceived as difficult and their application to practice unstructured and even haphazard. This study aimed to explore nursing students' opinions regarding the arrangement and content of basic science courses in undergraduate nursing curriculum. The term basic science courses in this research encompasses anatomy, biochemistry, microbiology, parasitology and physiology. Materials and methods: This descriptive study was performed on all 427 nursing students at Faculty of Nursing & Midwifery, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences. Data were collected with a semi-structured questionnaire for basic science courses. Face and content validity were checked. The reliability of the questionnaire was determined using the Cronbach's Alpha-test. Data were analyzed by SPSS(version 18) and descriptive statistics. Findings: Mean age of students was 21.6. 59.2 percent was female. 52.9 percent of students strongly disagreed with basic science courses presented in one semester synchronously. Also, 36.0, 11.4 and 10.8 percents of students believed that overloaded timetable, irrelevant clinical content and poor motivation of the curriculum, respectively, were the major problems. Conclusion: According to the results, it seems that curriculum planners should investigate about the clinical application of basic science courses as a priority.