Abstract

Introduction: Advice and guidance by counselors during the course will help students to overcome problems, achieve educational goals and succeed. Aim: The present study was to evaluate the student's opinion about educational guidance and counseling in School of Health of Zabol University of Medical Sciences. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional descriptive and analytical research, viewpoints of 242 students were collected by a questionnaire. In this questionnaire, the first section contained demographic characteristics of students and advisor. The second section encompassed of 25 items, score using a five-choice format. The statistical tests such as independent t-test, one-way ANOVA, and Tukey's test are used to compare the findings. Results: The highest mean scores were allocated to the evaluation of academic status and fluctuations in grades of students by the advisor, signing and controlling the unit selection form and other forms, announcing the counseling hours, evaluating the requests for permanent transfer, or transfer as guest, or medical certificates by academic advisor and knowledge of the advisor about the fields of study of students, respectively. Mean of perspective of students towards the performance of advisor was 3.91. Significant relationship between student perspectives and variables of gender, marital status and place of residence (p<0.05) was found. However, no significant association was found between the last academic degree and gender of advisor and perspective of students (p<0.05). Conclusion: The perspective of students toward the performance of the advisor was moderate. Therefore, improvement of the counseling services by equipping the consultant professors with sufficient knowledge through training courses and workshops is possible.