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Objective. Transitioning from college to university life is a whole new exciting experience for the students but it also often develops feelings of unfamiliarity within them. The literature states that near-peer mentoring is a new paradigm that can provide multiple opportunities for the professional growth of the mentees and mentors. This study aims to introduce a formal near-peer mentoring program at Ziauddin Medical College and identifies its effects on the participants of this program. Methods. A quasi-experimental study design was used for a duration of 5 months. In total, 73 students participated in the program, 21 from the 3rd year as near-peer mentors (NPMs) and 52 from the 1st year as mentees. All mentees were randomly distributed among the mentors, broadly in a ratio of 1 : 2. Data were collected using a peer-mentoring evaluation toolkit, having questions based on a Likert scale. Results. The results showed that after participating in this program, 69% of the mentees felt acclimatized into the university environment and 66% of the mentors also developed a sense of belonging. Ninety percent of the mentors agreed that their soft skills improved after mentoring their juniors. Overall, around 70% of the mentors and mentees agreed that participation in this program had positive effects on their learning. Conclusion. This study provides baseline information of NPM program intervention, which had a positive effect on both the participated mentors and mentees. Thus, the formal introduction of such programs will be beneficial for medical institutes to improve the student support process.

Objective: To compare the perception of dental faculty regarding face-to-face and virtual faculty development programs (FDPs) in dental institutes of Karachi. Study design and Setting: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted at multiple dental colleges of Karachi.(January to April 2020). Methodology: The study was carried out among 161 faculty members teaching in private dental institutes, using a modified, validated questionnaire with convenient sampling. Data was analyzed on SPSS version 21. Results: The mean age of study participants was 32.31±8.09 years, and teaching experience was 5.01 ± 6.34 years. Majority of the participants had not received any faculty development training (p-value of 0.001). Most of the faculty reported no established faculty development program available either face-to-face or virtually in their respective institute. Majority (28.8 %) of participants perceived that the main barrier for FDPs was the lack of administrative support. However, the facultydesired to enhance their teaching skills, recommending that faculty development programs be made compulsory for all faculty members. The majority of participants (35.43 +ve mean rank) were in favour of face-to-face sessions (p=0.001) but were reluctant towards virtual sessions. Most (49.2 %) of the faculty perceived the foremost benefit of attending FDPs to be improvement in teaching skills and MCQs /EMQs writing. Conclusion: Dental faculty were more inclined towards face-to-face sessions than virtually conducted sessions however, their perception of the utility of FDPs were found to be limited . Moreover, it was that some of the barriers to attend FDPs was faculty determinants like deficient time and dearth of commitment

The aim of this study was to determine the perception of faculty of undergraduate medical and dental programmes in various private and public sector institutes regarding their Readiness, Attitude and Institutional support for developing high-quality one-best MCQs.A validated questionnaire was designed for recording demographic data and responses related to Readiness, Attitude and Institutional support based on 5-point Likert scale and multiple options. Scores for items on Likert scale were categorised (Readiness: poor 0-12, good 13-24, Attitude: negative 0-12, positive 13-24, Institutional support: no support 0-12, highly supportive 13-24). The individual and overall scores related to Readiness, Attitude and Institutional support were compared to demographic characteristics using Independent samples and Paired samples t-test as appropriate. Data was analysed using SPSS version 25.0. P-value of0.05 (two-sided) was considered significant.With a response rate of 87.5%, the mean scores for Institutional support were higher (14.45 ± 4.73) compared to those for Readiness (13.39 ± 4.51) and Attitude (12.54 ± 4.59). Responses to multiple choice items revealed that faculty considered MCQ writing workshops to be effective while facing most difficulty in formulating scenario and homogenous options. Most faculty reported no commitment issues but desired on-job protected time for item development. No significant association was found between the scores and age group, gender, qualification, institute type, department and designation of participants.Overall, the faculty were found to be motivated and committed to developing high-quality one-best MCQs. With continued institutional support, faculty can be expected to further engage in writing such items.

Objectives The aim of this study was to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practices of ergonomics among dental graduates in Karachi. Materials and Methods A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted at Altamash Institute of Dental Medicine from December 2019 to April 2020. The study was performed among 174 dental graduates (house officers) in Karachi, using a modified, validated, closed-ended questionnaire. For statistical analysis, SPSS software (version 21) was used for descriptive statistics such as percentages and frequencies. The tests applied were independent t-test and Pearson’s correlation to compare and check the correlation between the variables. The p-value used was ≤ 0.05. Results Among 200 dental graduates, only 174 responses were analyzed in SPSS version 21. Females (78.2%) were more in number than males (21.8%), with most of them aged >23 years (59.1%). Of the study population, 78.7% graduates worked 4 to 6 hours per day, and more than half of the graduates (58%) did not do physical exercise outside work. Furthermore, we found that the majority of responders had a fair knowledge of ergonomic principles, where a total of 134 (77%) dental graduates had a positive attitude towards its implementation, however this was not reflected in their practices as 128 (73.6%) graduates has poor practices related to ergonomics. It was also found that knowledge and practices of ergonomics had a weak but significant correlation (r = 0.263, p = 0.001). Moreover, males were more positive about implementing and practicing ergonomics then females with a significant association (p = 0.001). Conclusions A majority of the dental graduates (house officers) in this present study had a reasonable knowledge of ergonomics and its principles also showed positivity but an only small number of them practiced dental ergonomics. This study recommends the need for including dental ergonomics in the academic curriculum of clinical years of both dental undergraduate and postgraduate studies and also conducts workshops to develop faculty to reinforce its importance.

Politics in education is not a new concept and has been a sore point of discussion between academia and policy makers. The politics of medical education has led to the formation of informal guilds that have taken control over medical education. Policy decisions concerning medical/dental education affecting the lives of the community, at large are implemented without giving due consideration to the pedagogy of medical education. This paper delves into the definitions of politics, pedagogy and guilds and with evidence identifies that major policy decisions in medical education are strongly influenced by politics. The paper will discuss that politics of medical education is not necessarily a bad thing if it ensures public safety and is based on best evidence medical education. In the same context the guilds formed for medical education reforms should uphold the principles of pedagogy. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.38.6.6057 How to cite this:Baig LA, Ali SK, Sarfaraz S. Role of Politics, Guilds and Pedagogy in defining Policies in Medical Education: The Pakistan Scenario. Pak J Med Sci. 2022;38(6):---------. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.38.6.6057 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Background Workaholism (WH) is related with high mental trouble and physical objections, low employment and family fulfillment, and low occupation execution; however, work commitment is related with job and life satisfaction. This study aimed to assess the impact of WH and work engagement (WE) on medical university employee job stress and satisfaction. Methods This descriptive analytical study was conducted on workers employed in medical universities using validated questionnaires for data collection. The sample size was 330, from which 305 responded with completed questionnaire. The employees were the direct workers of different accessible medical universities in Karachi, Pakistan. The employee enrolment and distribution of the questionnaire was performed using non-probability convenient sampling. The Brief Job Questionnaire (BJQ), Dutch Work Addiction Scale (DUWAS) and Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) were used to assess the impact of job stress on job satisfaction and WE. The data was analyzed by applying descriptive statistics, Spearman correlation and regression analysis. A p-value of ≤ 0.05 was taken as significant. Results The study consisted of 117 (38.4%) male and 188 (61.6%) female participants; the mean age of participating employee was 28.50 ± 6.192. The mean score for WE was 3.78 ± 0.467, that of WH was 3.42 ± 0.559, for JS was 4.29 ± 0.400, whereas JSF was 3.10 ± 0.591. A positive correlation was observed between job stress, WH and WE. WH had a strong correlation with job stress and weak correlation with job satisfaction and performance. A significant difference was observed between WE and WH among males and females. Conclusions The study presented with a significant effect of job satisfaction with WH and WE with job stress. Hence, indicating the importance of social skills and WE with fellow employees to increase the work productivity and performance. However, in case of over work and WH, an increase of job stress is inevitable.

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to evaluate the self-perceived competency (FSPC) of medical faculty in E-Teaching and support received during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: An online well-structured and validated faculty self-perceived competency questionnaire was used to collect responses from medical faculty. The questionnaire consisted of four purposely build sections on competence in student engagement, instructional strategy, technical communication and time management. The responses were recorded using a Likert ordinal scale (1–9). The Questionnaire was uploaded at www.surveys.google.com and the link was distributed through social media outlets and e-mails. Descriptive statistics and Independent paired t-test were used for analysis and comparison of quantitative and qualitative variables. A p-value of ≤0.05 was considered statistically significant. RESULTS: A total of 738 responses were assessed. Nearly 54% (397) participants had less than 5 years of teaching experience, 24.7% (182) had 6–10 years and 11.7% (86) had 11–15 years teaching expertise. 75.6% (558) respondents have delivered online lectures during the pandemic. Asynchronous methods were used by 61% (450) and synchronous by 39% (288) of participants. Moreover, 22.4% (165) participants revealed that their online lectures were evaluated by a structured feedback from experts, while 38.3% participants chose that their lectures were not evaluated. A significant difference (p

BACKGROUND: E-learning is increasingly used during the COVID-19 pandemic, however the impact of this change on students is not known. This study aimed to evaluate perception and satisfaction of health sciences students towards E-learning during the COVID-19 lockdown. METHODS: A structured questionnaire was distributed to 2000 health care students either through email or social media platforms. The questionnaire was divided into two sections: the first section addressed demographic information such as age, education level, course of study, number of lectures attended and country. The second section gathered information on perception and satisfaction of students using 13 close-ended questions. Frequencies and percentages were assessed for demographic data, perception and satisfaction level of students. The paired sample t-test, independent t test and Spearman correlation were applied to evaluate statistical significance between different variables of the study. A p-value of

The world is currently facing a pandemic crisis due to a novel coronavirus. For this purpose, acquiring updated knowledge regarding prevention and disinfection during the current pandemic is necessary for every dental practitioner. In our study, we aimed to evaluate globally the level of knowledge and the attitude of dental practitioners related to disinfection. A total of 385 participants out of 401 participants from 23 different countries across the world were included in the final analysis after the exclusion of incomplete responses. The majority of the dentists who responded were females (53.8%) and were practicing at private health institutes (36.4%). The mean knowledge score of the participants was estimated to be 4.19 &plusmn, 1.88 out of 12, reflecting insufficient knowledge, and the mean attitude score of the participants was estimated to be 12.24 &plusmn, 3.23 out of 15, which shows a positive attitude toward disinfection practices during coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19). Thus, the current study indicated a lack of knowledge in fundamental aspects of disinfection protocols with a significant and positive attitude from dental health professionals toward disinfection regarding the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.