الفهرس 
Review of LiteratureOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
 |  | from | 132 |  |  |
| | | from | 132 | | |
Abstract
Leadership skills are mandatory for both individuals’ and organizational efficient performance. Consequently, most organizations invest a lot of their resources on leadership enhancement including strategic planning, capacity building, annual performance planning, risk management, monitoring and evaluation and performance appraisals. Without spending these efforts on leadership processes, the organizations will DROP into crisis.
Leaders are made and not born. Effective leadership skills are needed more today than before due to the increase in the hierarchy and complexity of health care system. A Successful leader has got to be flexible in order to cope with differences among groups as well as changing situations. Flexibility is an important trait of an effective leader. Leaders should anticipate problems and be ready to provide solutions as the need arises.
As University education is an important milestone in life, the internationally recognized medical schools allocate great efforts towards introducing Leadership courses for their undergraduate medical students to provide them with necessary leadership and management skills that they can build on in their future. Evaluation of such courses is critical to ensure students’ acquisition of leadership skills Such courses are usually associated with satisfactory results with increased leadership knowledge and expertise among students.
The Medical education department at Faculty of medicine, Ain Shams university launched a novel course for teaching leadership skills in the academic year 2021-2022 for fourth-year medical students in the newly established Egyptian Medical Program. The course aimed to better prepare students for medical practice. It is a core course totally delivered online. The course focuses on 8 leadership competencies, namely: leadership styles, emotional intelligence, negotiation, conflict resolution, decision making, positive feedback, delegation and managing change. Each competency is discussed in a separate session.
The course stresses on five leadership competencies from the five domains of the Medical Leadership Competency Framework (MLCF) which are: leadership style, communication within the health care team, giving and receiving feedback, delegating responsibilities, and setting direction (decision making).
The platform for delivering course sessions (lectures) was the undergraduate Moodle with an average of one session per week, for 8 weeks. Each session had an average time interval about 50 minutes. Each session was in the form of interactive videos, collectively 9 interactive video sessions, with embedded MCQ questions to be answered within each video, to ensure understanding the previous part of the session. Questions have got to be answered correctly to be able to move to the next part of the session, otherwise the previous part of the video (related to that question) will be repeated to ensure proper understanding and to optimize student engagement. These interactive questions were introduced in each interactive video using the H5P plugin. Lectures were timely opened for the students. After that, discussions were held in the discussion forum of the Moodle under each lecture for more interaction between the students and their instructor.
This study aimed to evaluate the newly implemented leadership course regarding the change in leadership knowledge and attitude of students, to assess their satisfaction and provide areas for improvement of the course as a part of a continuous ongoing process of educational quality assurance. The course evaluation followed level 1 and 2 in the Kirkpatrick evaluation model namely, Reaction and Learning.
In this study, a pretest was delivered just before starting the course to assess the baseline leadership students’ self-perception about leadership attitude and their baseline leadership knowledge, prior to starting the course. Then, posttest and satisfaction survey were delivered immediately after the course ended to assess the impact of the course in changing the students’ self-perception about leadership attitude, acquired knowledge in each topic (domain) and to assess their satisfaction. Students’ grades in the course final exam were recorded and analyzed; they were objective indicators of students’ achievement and proof for leadership knowledge acquisition.
In this study, 189 students responded to pretest only whereas 102 students responded in the Posttest survey. On comparing pre and posttest results, it was found that there was a significant difference between students’ overall Leadership attitude, before and after the course with improvement of their attitude after attending the course
The attitude of the students towards the different leadership skills significantly improved after taking the course; in the following domains: leadership and management, constructive feedback, emotional intelligence and managing change.
There was also a significant difference between students’ leadership knowledge before and after the course with improvement of their knowledge after attending the course in the following domains: leadership styles, negotiation/conflict resolution, delegation and managing change.
On the other hand, there was no significant difference between male and female students in their leadership attitude or knowledge in the pre and posttests. There was also no significant difference between students of Mainstream and those of EMP in their leadership attitude in the pre and posttests, except in decision making.
There was no significant difference between Mainstream and EMP students in their leadership knowledge, except in conflict resolution before the course and in leadership and management knowledge after the course. There was also, no significant difference between students attending a similar training course before, and students’ leadership attitude, pre and post course.
There was no statistically significant difference in students previously attending a similar course in their overall leadership knowledge after the course. Even though there was a statistically significance difference before the course in students previously attending a similar course in their overall leadership knowledge especially in the following domains (topics): leadership and management, leadership styles, decision making and conflict resolution.
As regards Course satisfaction survey, it showed high students’ satisfaction with the course. 89 students (87.3%) highly rated the course with 46 students (45.1%) rating it as excellent and 43 students (42.2%) rating it as very good. Eighty students (78.4%) agreed that the course was well organized. 77 students (75.5%) praised the course structure and content.
And finally, scores of the students in their final exam showed that the percentage of success was 92.4% where 379 students got grades higher than 9.6. which is considered to be a satisfactory result of a newly implemented course.
Conclusion
The newly implemented leadership and management course at Faculty of Medicine, Ain shams university had positive impact improving students’ leadership knowledge and attitude regarding the taught topics. Moreover, students were highly satisfied with the course.
Recommendation
Further changes might be done to the course to make it more interactive through introducing face to face discussions, role plays and real case scenarios to simulate real life situations. The addition of synchronous online sessions and prolonging the time interval of the course might be beneficial as well. Course evaluation through the coming years will surely throw more light on further changes that could be undertaken to improve the course and achieve the intended learning outcomes.
Further recommendations for evaluation of other course aspects in future research might include assessing other stakeholders’ satisfaction with the course such as staff involved in teaching the course as well as administration. Moreover, assessment of the teaching methods in achieving intended learning outcomes is required. Finally, follow-up study of these students to assess long term leadership growth and the actual gaining of leadership skills by medical students.