BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic led to the closure of crowded places such as universities and replaced face-to-face learning with virtual education. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the challenges of virtual learning from the students' perspectives. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This qualitative descriptive study was conducted on students of Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences. Purposeful sampling was performed by semi-structured group interviews on the Internet in the WhatsApp social network. Fifty-two nursing, midwifery, hygiene, and paramedical students were interviewed. Every interview was started by asking the question “what is your experience about virtual teaching?” The data were analyzed using MAXQDA software version 2020. According to the steps of qualitative content analysis, content analysis was performed and the themes were extracted. RESULTS: Fifty-two students were interviewed in eight group sessions. Qualitative data analysis leads to the extraction of 23 codes, 7 categories, and the 2 main themes; dissatisfaction with virtual education with 4 categories (lack of feedback, communication channel problems, the unpreparedness of the message receiver, and weakness in educational content) and solutions to the modification of virtual teaching with three categories (possibility of receiving feedback, channel improvement, and strengthening educational content) were extracted. The highest frequency of code was related to the dissatisfaction with the uploaded contents. CONCLUSIONS: Virtual education has created a negative experience among students for various reasons, including the lack of distance learning infrastructure and the lack of a standard for preparing quality content. Therefore, it is necessary for the officials of the Education Development Center to supervise the prepared contents and improve distance learning infrastructure.

Context: Pre-hospital care plays a vital role in saving trauma patients. Objectives: This study aims to review studies conducted on the pre-hospital emergency status in Iran. Data Sources: Data were sourced from Iranian electronic databases, including SID, IranMedex, IranDoc, Magiran, and non-Iranian electronic databases, such as Medline, Embase, Cochrane Library, Scopus, and Google Scholar. In addition, available data and statistics for the country were used. Data Selection: All Persian-language articles published in Iranian scientific journals and related English-language articles published in Iranian and non-Iranian journals indexed on valid sites for September 2005 - 2014 were systematically reviewed. Data Extraction: To review the selected articles, a data extraction form developed by the researchers as per the study’s objective was adopted. The articles were examined under two categories: structure and function of pre-hospital emergency. Results: A total of 19 articles were selected, including six descriptive studies (42%), four descriptive-analytical studies (21%), five review articles (16%), two qualitative studies (10.5%), and two interventional (experimental) studies (10.5%). In addition, of these, 14 articles (73.5%) had been published in the English language. The focus of these selected articles were experts (31.5%), bases of emergency medical services (26%), injured (16%), data reviews (16%), and employees (10.5%). A majority of the studies (68%) investigated pre-hospital emergency functions and 32% reviewed the pre-hospital emergency structure. Conclusions: The number of studies conducted on pre-hospital emergency services in Iran is limited. To promote public health, consideration of prevention areas, processes to provide pre-hospital emergency services, policymaking, foresight, systemic view, comprehensive research programs and roadmaps, and assessments of research needs in pre-hospital emergency seem necessary. Keywords: Pre-Hospital Emergency; Iran; Systematic Review

Objective: How people behave in a crisis depends on their understanding and evaluation of risk and vulnerability. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the Iranians’ risk perception of coronavirus disease (COVID-19).Methods: An online survey was applied, which resulted in the collection of information on demographics, the 5 dimensions of risk perception (cognitive, political, social, cultural, and emotional), and trust in the government among the Iranian users of social networks. Data were analyzed by descriptive and analytical tests of SPSS (IBM Corp, Armonk, NY) software, and confirmatory factor analysis of Amos software.Results: A total of 364 persons from 20 provinces completed the questionnaire during February 25 to March 2, 2020. More than 80% of the participants believed that negligence and lack of close supervision of the authorities have led to the spread of COVID-19. The mean (SD) risk perception was 58.77 (± 10.11), indicating the medium level of risk perception of people. The second-order confirmatory factor analysis also indicated that cultural dimension had the highest positive correlation (0.96), emotional dimension had the highest negative correlation (-0.65), and social dimension had the least correlation with the risk perception model (0.08).Conclusion: Iranians’ risk perception of the COVID-19 outbreak is not optimal, and it seems necessary to improve it.

This research aimed to systematically study and outline the methods of hospital performance evaluation used in Iran. In this systematic review, all Persian and English-language articles published in the Iranian and non-Iranian scientific journals indexed from Sep 2004 to Sep 2014 were studied. For finding the related articles, the researchers searched the Iranian electronic databases, including SID, IranMedex, IranDoc, Magiran, as well as the non-Iranian electronic databases, including Medline, Embase, Scopus, and Google Scholar. For reviewing the selected articles, a data extraction form, developed by the researchers was used. The entire review process led to the selection of 51 articles. The publication of articles on the hospital performance evaluation in Iran has increased considerably in the recent years. Besides, among these 51 articles, 38 articles (74.51%) had been published in Persian language and 13 articles (25.49%) in English language. Eight models were recognized as evaluation model for Iranian hospitals. Totally, in 15 studies, the data envelopment analysis model had been used to evaluate the hospital performance. Using a combination of model to integrate indicators in the hospital evaluation process is inevitable. Therefore, the Ministry of Health and Medical Education should use a set of indicators such as the balanced scorecard in the process of hospital evaluation and accreditation and encourage the hospital managers to use them.