Iranian Journal of Medical Education

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Introduction: Health system management is regarded a chief duty and skill of health care providers. However, medical students do not receive enough training for it. The first national Olympiad for students of medical sciences was designed to motivate students for acquiring managerial skills, improve reasoning and problem solving skills, and also propagate team working in students in an excitingly competitive and joyful atmosphere. Methods: Designing a model for the olympiad included four phases: building up a framework for designing the exam questions, determining topics of the exam, setting the exam questions and administering it, and finally judging. In summer 2009 the first national olympiad for the students of medical sciences on reasoning & decision making in health system management was held in Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. The first two days of the five-day-long open source olympiad were spent on individual competition. The following three days were devoted to group competitions. Six groups of three Students competed in this part. Results: After 19 months, with the help of a large group of university teachers with related specialties, a framework for the selection of the exam questions was built up. The themes of the Olympiad were decided to be Health policy and health economics. The topic for group competition phase was current problems in implementation of the family physician project in Iran. In the individual competition phase, the students were to answer 194 questions and in the group phase they were asked 3 open-ended questions. 106 students studying different medical fields nationwide participated in the event 71 students (66.98%) were girls. most participants were students of medicine (33 students) and others were students of nursing (26 students), health management (20 students), and other fields of study (27 students). Conclusion: Considering the significance of medical students' awareness of heath system management and the importance of improving reasoning and decision making abilities in them, holding such examinations could facilitate the achievement of these objectives.

Keywords: Science Olympiad, Reasoning, Health System Management, Health policy, Health economics

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