[Monitoring and evaluation of effectiveness of the postgraduate training in occupational hygiene]

Abstract

The large scope and thematic diversity of the postgraduate education, led in great part on commercial principles in conditions of the increasing competition on educational market, is connected with particular expectations and with the growing critisism of the students, and is critically observed by employers, professional circles and public opinion. Therefore monitoring and evaluation of the postgraduate training quality acquire an importance. Quality is understood here as efficiency, i.e. the level of real achievement of educational objectives with preserving defined standards of the professional knowledge and skills. In the years 1998-2001 in the Nofer Institute of Occupational Medicine in Lodz the students assessed with the help of special questionnaires training programs, courses' contents and teaching personnel of all postgraduate training cycles in occupational hygiene. The evaluation studies with the use of a questionnaire of acquired competencies self-assessment was also carried out. The data gathered in this way were included in the reports directed to the course managers, and afterwards subjected to a comparative analysis in result of which the degree in which particular curricula in occupational hygiene produced professional competencies' increase perceived by the students was defined, the degree in which particular teaching subjects and classes influenced occupational hygiene knowledge and skills of the students was pointed out, and the quality of professional and didactic skills of the members of teaching personnel was defined, as perceived by the students.