Although we have access to various drugs and diagnostic equipment today, tuberculosis is still regarded as the most fatal disease of single microbial factor. A large number of children across the world have been made orphans due to this disease. World Health Organization(WHO) called a global emergency for tuberculosis in 1993. Because of MDR(Multi Drug Resistance) there is a risk that tuberculosis turns to a disease difficult to treat. Among the causes of global defeat in the treatment of tuberculosis and formation of MDR, are delay in treatment and physicians’ faults. Nevertheless, the disease can still be controlled by implementation of DOTS(Directly Observed Short Course). The necessity for organizing such course is the cooperation of all private sectors. One of the plans of this course, based on which national schemes are designed, is educating the medical staff at all levels specially the physicians. This study is aimed at evaluating one of the educational methods on the knowledge and attitudes of general practitioners. This study is based on a before-after study method in which 340 GPS of private sector have been simply sampled randomly. The knowledge and attitudes of the physicians were tested by a questionnaire. A self study method was also used as an educational method, using the book entitled “National Guide for Combating Tuberculosis”. The study proved that the physicians primarily had a favorable attitude to the national plan but their knowledge was very low(1.8%). Education proved to have a positive effect on knowledge and attitudes of the physicians in a way that the mean scores given to physicians’ knowledge and attitudes before and after education showed a significant difference. The change in knowledge and attitudes of physicians of public sector did not show any significant relation with demographic and work experience variant in public sector. Based on the results of the present study it can be concluded that self-learning has a positive effect on attitudes and specially knowledge of the physicians.

Keywords: Key Words: 1) Knowledge 2) Attitude 3) DOTS 4) Self-Learning 5) General practitioners

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