A blueprint for success: lessons learned from developing the official guide to Iranian undergraduate medical education accreditation

Mahdi Aghabagheri; Babak Sabet; Abtin Heidarzadeh; Ebrahim Kalantar; Ali Norouzi; Maryam Alizadeh

doi:10.1186/s12909-024-05215-6

A blueprint for success: lessons learned from developing the official guide to Iranian undergraduate medical education accreditation

BMC Med Educ. 2024 Mar 7;24(1):249. doi: 10.1186/s12909-024-05215-6.

Authors

Mahdi Aghabagheri¹, Babak Sabet², Abtin Heidarzadeh³, Ebrahim Kalantar⁴, Ali Norouzi⁵, Maryam Alizadeh⁶

Affiliations

¹ Philosophy of Science Department, School of Medicine, Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran.
² Department of Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
³ Medical Education Research Center, Guilan University of Medical Sciences, Guilan, Iran.
⁴ Smart University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
⁵ School of Medicine, Education Development Center (EDC) and Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan, Iran.
⁶ Department of Medical Education, School of Medicine and Health Professions Education Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS), Tehran, Iran. alizade.aban@gmail.com.

Abstract

We are excited to contribute our thoughts and insights to the discussion initiated by Gandomkar et al. in their article on the accreditation system in Iran (Gandomkar et al., BMC Med Educ 23:379, 2023). As individuals who have been directly involved in the process of meta-accreditation and possess a comprehensive understanding of the various stages of Undergraduate Medical Education (UME) accreditation in Iran, we would like to highlight additional points that were identified through a rigorous hermeneutic phenomenology process proposed by Gadamer (Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2013) and offer a complementary point of view to the previous work. By sharing our insights, we hope to contribute to the ongoing discourse surrounding UME accreditation.

Keywords: Accreditation; Official guide; WFME.

Publication types

Letter

MeSH terms

Accreditation
Education, Medical, Continuing
Education, Medical, Undergraduate*
Humans
Iran
Schools, Medical