Academic performance and educational outcomes in the Degree of Physiotherapy at POLISAL, UNAN-Managua

Abstract

The objective of this study was to determine the relationship between the academic performance and the educational outcomes of the students doing Physiotherapy at POLISAL (Polytechnic Institute of Health), UNAN-Managua, from 2013 to 2015. It was an analytic, retro-prospective, transversal, quantitative and qualitative study; the target population for this study was of 43 students who officially started up in 2013. A survey was applied; a document review guide and a focus group were conducted with the students. The analysis of the data was made through contingency tables, for all those non-parametric variables a test of χ2 (Chi2) were applied. Furthermore, the Kaplan-Meier test was applied to for the operational variable of relation between two variables in the study, in addition to this, there was a univariate analysis of variance. The results demonstrated the prevalence of the female sex with 70% between 20 and 21 years old, 80% comes from cities like Managua, Carazo, Granada, Masaya. Also, 43% live and receive financial support from their parents, 83.3% qualified for their particular majors being their first option. The teachers´ performance was rated very good and excellent. The results of the Kaplan Meier technique showed that 53.5% achieved terminal efficiency during their three years of study. The analysis of univariate variance determined that there is a cause-effect relationship between academic performance and educational outcomes, corroborating that as the semester progresses, subjects are more complex.