a survey on the attitudes anxiety of the participants at morning report (mr) sessions held in english at sbmu hospitals in tehran

background an purpose: english as the lingua franca of the third millennium has well opened its way through all aspects of life including medicine. in line with this trend, some hospital wards at shahid beheshti medical university (sbmu) have started to hold their usual morning report(mr) sessions in english. usually everyday there is an mr session in farsi, and one day per week it is held in english. among other factors, participants’ attitudes and the stress/or anxiety felt by the participants in these aural/oral sessions may become important and have impacts on patients’ future treatment plans decided at the mr sessions. the present study seeks to determine the participants’ attitudes and probable anxiety experienced by them.methods: a total number of 110 participants (61 male, 45 female) attendants at the mr sessions from three of the sbmu affiliated hospitals in tehran attended this study. the participants included 13 attending physicians (all sbmu academics), 56 residents (from orthopedics, urology, internal medicine, nephrology, neurology, obstetrics amp;amp; gyn wards), 24 interns and 12 stager students from the above wards also attended the study. 4 validated questionnaires were filled out by the participants at the mr sessions along with a form to show their attention to the cases presented and a form on how they had answered the questions. the data collected were analysed by the spss16.results: all participants had filled out the forms expect for 4 of them which were discarded due to their inaccuracy. following correlations, no significant differences were found between male/ female attitude towards holding of the mr sessions (p=0.362). inter-hospital and inter-ward correlations showed no significant differences (p=0.648 and p=0.881 respectively). there was, however a signifi¬cant difference between the attending physicians’ attitudes and those of the interns (p= 0.046).as for the attention paid during the sessions to the cases presented, the results showed a significant differ¬ence between the males and females (p=0.010). also, there was a significant difference between the attention paid by the attending physicians and those of the residents, interns and the stager students (p=0.002). another significant difference in this area was found between the interns and the stager students (p=0.002). as for the stress experienced among the participants, no significant differences were found in any ar¬eas of the hospitals related to the sex, and academic ranks of the participants. there was also a fair linear relationship between the onset of stress experienced and the participants’ attitude in holding mr sessions. conclusion:based on the obtained results, it became clear that compared to the interns, the attending physicians had higher attitudes towards holding the mr sessions. the results obtained for the atten¬tion paid during the mr sessions was better among the males than among the females.this should draw the attention of the academic policy makers and curriculum developers towards paying more attention on what courses the students really need while practicing english at the medical universities. moreover, stress and anxiety, and attitude go hand in hand during these important sessions.