Prevalence of occupational stress among Iranian physicians and dentist: a systematic and meta-analysis study.

BACKGROUND: Occupational stress in health care providers is an undesirable factor that can lead to dissatisfaction and burnout and affect the quality of care and treatment of patients. This study estimated the prevalence of occupational stress among Iranian physicians and dentists. METHOD: The articles were searched using the keywords: "job stress", "job-related stress", "occupational stress", "work-related stress", "workplace stress", "physician", "dentist", and "Iran", and all possible combinations of these terms in domestic databases of Scientific Information Database (SID) and MagIran and international databases of Web of Science, PubMed, and Scopus with no time limit. Heterogeneity among the studies was assessed using the Cochran's Q test. Data analysis was performed in Stata version 11 based on the heterogeneity state using a random-effects model. RESULTS: The sample size in selected articles on physicians and dentists varied from 71 to 516 and 90 to 200, respectively. The prevalence of occupational stress in physicians was 70.10% (95% CI: 55.43-84.78), and among dentists was 50.87% (95% CI: 33.93-67.81). According to the results, there was no significant association between the prevalence of occupational stress, sample size, and year of publication in physicians and dentists. The results showed that publication bias was (p=0.029) for physicians and (p=0.630) for dentists. CONCLUSIONS: Occupational stress among Iranian physicians and dentists is high, which can adversely affect therapists and patients. Therefore, it is necessary to focus on this problem to manage and control it.

Learning styles and strategies preferences of Iranian medical students in gross anatomy courses and their correlations with gender.

The learning approaches can help anatomy teachers design a suitable curriculum in harmony with their students' learning styles. The research objective is to evaluate gross anatomy learning styles and strategies preferences of Iranian medical students at Kashan University of Medical Sciences (KAUMS). This cross-sectional questionnaire-based study was carried out on 237 Iranian medical students. The students answered questions on approaches to learning anatomy and expressed opinions about learning anatomy in medical curriculum. The data were analyzed to disclose statistically significant differences between male and female students. Iranian male and female students were interested in learning anatomy using notes, plastic models, pictures and diagrams, clinical context, dissection and prosection of cadavers; however, they rarely used cross-sectional images and web-based resources. Both groups of medical students used region and system in learning anatomy. However, there existed some striking differences, particularly in having difficulty in studying anatomy using cadaveric specimens, using books alone, and learning it in small groups. Male students were less interested in learning with cadavers than female counterparts. However, female students were more interested in learning anatomy in small groups. This study suggests that instructors should design gross anatomy curriculum based on limitations of using dissection of cadaver in Iranian universities, emphasis on the applied anatomy, and learning of gross anatomy in small groups.