Investigating the barriers to clinical education among medical students in Iran: A narrative review study

Various factors can affect the clinical education of medical students. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the barriers to clinical educational related to medical students in Iranian universities of medical sciences. To conduct this study, all studies related to the subject under discussion, during the years 2000-2022, by systematically searching internationally available databases including Web of Science, Science Direct, Scopus, PubMed, and Google Scholar, were reviewed. Finally, 14 fully relevant studies were selected to investigate the main objective. The results of the present study showed that some factors, such as clinical environment, educational programs, facilities and equipment, number of students, how teaching professors, educators and hospital staff interacted with students, motivation and interest of students, hope for the future, job security and other similar parameters could affect the quality of clinical education. Based on the results of the present study, it can be concluded that the quality of clinical education in different universities of medical sciences is different and depended on many factors. Furthermore, it is necessary for the educational administrators of medical universities in Iran to identify the needs and shortcomings related to the clinical education of universities and then remove those barriers.