Abstract

Introduction: educational need analysis is the turning point of every instructional activity aiming at the recognition and discovery of the skill, knowledge and discretionary deficits for the successful implementation of an occupation. Therefore, an opportunity can be provided for the individuals to be asked question as to what instructional materials do they think should be offered to improve their competencies. Since there is a need for controlling of the conditions upon the emergence of crisis and implementation of special managerial methods is required for the reduction of the stress, the information provision finds an importance twice as much higher in such conditions. According to the important role of the journalists in the psychological and intellectual management of the individual under critical conditions, the present study has been designed and implemented with the objective of investigating the aspects of healthcare journalists’ instruction under critical conditions with an emphasis on educational need analysis. Implementation Method: the present study is a qualitative research that has been conducted based on an analytical method. The study makes use of semi-structured interviews to collect the required data. It was carried out in 2017. The study population included all healthcare journalists out of whom 14 were selected based on a purposive sampling as the study sample volume. The study participants were interviewed in person. Thirteen questions were designed with an open format and of three types; warm-up questions, including four demographic questions specific to the journalists’ history; specifying questions were concentrated on crisis information and the clarifying questions were directed at journalism at critical conditions. To analyze the qualitative data obtained, there was made use of Atlas4 Software in such a way that a total of 22 preliminary codes were acquired from interview text analysis following which the contents of themes were determined in an investigation of each code in respect to the topics and subtopics. Three main themes were specified, including knowledge requirements of the instruction, attitudinal requirements of the instruction and skill requirements of the instruction and the specialized needs of the healthcare area were respectively identified in 4, 2 and 2 sets. Findings: the study findings indicated that the journalists’ instructional needs are evident and investigable in three areas of knowledge, attitudes and skills within the specialized level of healthcare and crisis area. In the area of the knowledge requirements of the instruction, the enjoyment of the healthcare area knowledge, crisis and critical conditions recognition, recognition of diseases and epidemics, self-care and buddy-aid were identified as the instructional needs. In the area of attitudinal requirements of the instruction, correct and encouraging information provisioning and awareness of the limitations of relieving organizations were pinpointed; and, in the area of the skill requirements of the instruction, problem-analysis competency in the healthcare area and increasing the interaction and cooperation between the security-establishing organizations and outcomes management were pointed out as the most important. Conclusion: considering the fact that our country is situated in an accident-prone region of the world, instruction of the journalists in the specialized area of crisis should be taken into account more than ever before. This necessity is felt due to the extant sensitivities upon the occurrence of crisis and in the healthcare area for its being highly specialized. The first step of journalists’ instruction, i.e. instructional need analysis, has been taken in the present study in three areas, namely knowledge, attitude and skill requirements of instruction, so that the extant needs of the healthcare journalists could be removed and they can be fully prepared to face crisis. It will be shown herein that how important these instructional needs are and how they can be accounted for within a codified instructional program.