Evidence-Based Learning in Occupational Health Management

Objectives: Occupational health management is an importantcourse for occupational health students. This course will be morebeneficial if it is taught with new educational methods. Theobjective of this study was the introduction of an evidence-basedlearning method for occupational health management.Methods: This was a semi-experimental study which wasconducted using the curriculum of occupational health. This studywas doneon 102 occupational health students. This course hadbeen taught2014-2015 with evidence-based learning method forstudents. In this method, teacher used recent related references,journals and websites about the occupational health management.Tests were administered pre- and post-classes using multiplechoice questions and short answers. The results of exams wereanalysedby SPSS 16 using paired t-tests with statisticalsignificance set a p < 0.05.Results: The average grade of occupational health managementwas 17.54 ± 1.49 (Min: 13.25 and Max: 19.50) in the post-test andwas 1.2 ± 0. 3 (Min: 0 and Max: 1. 5) in pretest(p < 0.001). Allof the theoretical and applicable lessons were significantlydifferent with p < 0.001, but in practical lessons was significantwith p = 0.003.Conclusion: According to these results, evidence-based learningwas a useful educational method for occupational healthmanagement, especially for theoretical lessons.