A report on the blended short-term supplementary course on "Developmental Care for infants and toddlers" taught with a multidisciplinary approach for pediatricians -qualitative and quantitative study

• Published in: BMC medical education 2022-12, Vol.22 (1), p.877-877, Article 877
• Main Authors: Heidarabadi, Seifollah, Barzegar, Mohammad, Hazrati, Hakimeh, Shahrokhi, Hassan, Nemati, Shahrooz, Khiabani, Nahideh Hasani, Maleki, Zahra
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Australia; Care and treatment; Child development; Child Health; Child, Preschool; Children & youth; Curriculum; Education; Humans; Infant; Infants; Interdisciplinary Approach; Intervention; Interviews; Iran; Learning; Learning Processes; Likert scale; Medical education; Multidisciplinary; Pediatric; Pediatricians; Pediatrics; Qualitative and quantitative study; Qualitative research; Questionnaires; Study and teaching; Teaching; Teaching Methods; Toddlers; Validation studies; Validity; Young Children
• ISSN: 1472-6920; 1472-6920
• DOI: 10.1186/s12909-022-03943-1

The implementation of follow-up programs for high-risk infants and toddlers aimed to promptly diagnose developmental delays and disorders and initiate early intervention to help improve their developmental status, reduce their care costs in the future, as well as improve their productivity as members of society. There is a lack of qualified specialists in the infant and toddler development field in Iran. To compensate for the lack of training in this area, for the first time, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences has designed a short-term supplementary course of "Developmental Care for Infants and Toddlers". Due to the multidisciplinary nature of the field of child development, this course has been designed as such. The current study aimed to evaluate this course and explain the graduates' relevant experiences using a multidisciplinary approach. The current study is a quantitative/qualitative study conducted in two phases. In the first step, the learners were asked to assess the teaching quality of the short-term supplementary course of "Developmental Care for Infants and Toddlers" in 5 areas of "educational design," "course administrators' support", " learners' motivation ", "acquisition of general learning and specialized skills" using the Australian Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ). All graduates completed the questionnaires. The data from the questionnaires were analyzed using descriptive statistics of medians, and interquartile ranges in SPSS software. The second step was a qualitative study to explain the graduates' experiences of this course with a multidisciplinary approach. The samples were selected using a purposive sampling technique. The samples were those who had completed the course mentioned above, had rich experiences in this field, and were willing to share them. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using conventional content analysis. In general, the graduates' satisfaction with the course in terms of the five areas studied was evaluated as follows: Educational design, motivating participants to do their best had the greatest median. 5(4-5), Learning objectives; in all items, the median was 4. Course content and resources; all items median were 4 .Relevant learner assessment methods; in all items, the median was 4.The median learners' satisfaction in the areas of "course administrators' support" in all items was 4 and "learners' motivation ", was 5. Learner's motivation" in all items it was 4, indic