Faculty Members' Attitude toward Academic Advising and Counseling and their Viewpoints about Counseling Duties

Introduction: Advising and counseling students, a part of faculty members' duties, is a way for overcoming preventable problems and educational failure due to those problems. The aim of this study was to determine the attitude of faculty members of Kerman University of Medical Sciences toward advising and counseling students and their views about the duties of counselor faculty members. Methods: In this descriptive cross-sectional study, 164 faculty members were investigated using a question-naire. The attitude questions of this questionnaire had the validity and reliability of 0.8 and 0.67, respectively. The reliability of 0.8 was calculated for questions of counselor duties. The gathered data was analyzed by SPSS software, using t-tests and one way ANOVA. Results: Seventy seven percent of faculty members had the experience of student counseling, 82.6% were aware of counseling duties, and 86.7% were completely agree or agree with counselor's duties. In total, 74.3% of the faculty members achieved the total score of attitude. A significant difference was observ-ed between the mean scores of the attitude based on the variables of academic rank and being aware of counselor's duties. Conclusion: With regard to almost positive attitude of faculty members towards counseling and advising, and their agreement with the duties approved by ministry, there is no doubt that having enough and appropriate knowledge and competency in performing counseling tasks in order to help the students is essential. Therefore, informing and educating faculty members regarding student advising and counseling are recommended.