The Accreditation of the Family Medicine Residency Training Programme in Universities of Medical Sciences(UMS) of Iran

Family medicine expertise as one of the most important policies have been proposed in the field of education and health system in the last decade.The aim of this study is the accreditation of the family physician residency in  medical sciences universities in Iran.

This is an accreditation and evaluation study that was implemented by the General Medical Council Secretariat of the Ministry of Health and Medical Education (MOHME) in collaboration with the Medical Education Research Center of Guilan University of Medical Sciences and the World Health Organization. The implementation process of this project was in two stages of internal evaluation and external evaluation in 12 universities of medical sciences of the country that were training the specialized course of family medicine and the sampling method was based on the entire research community. The family medicine specialty standards questionnaire designed by WONCA (2013 and 2016 editions) was used for internal evaluation. The translation and localization of the said questionnaire was done using the Backward- Forward method. After translation, the questionnaire was provided to the universities through the correspondence of the secretariat of the General Medical Council with 12 universities of the country. At the beginning of the internal evaluation, the self- evaluation forms were sent to universities.After the internal evaluation by the universities, an external evaluation was conducted. Then the members of the scientific committee determined the external evaluators to monitor the activities of the twelve universities. Data were analyzed in two quantitative and qualitative methods through SPSS. The information obtained from documents and interviews was analyzed qualitatively. In order to match the results of internal and external evaluation as well as the compatibility of documents with reports, a comparative evaluation was done by external evaluators and the research team.

According to the results of the internal and external evaluations and the opinions of the evaluators, the final decision regarding the accreditation of the specialized family medicine residency by universities was issued by the research team. Based on this decision, 2 universities of medical sciences partially approved the program (3 years); 3 University of Medical Sciences partial approval of the program (2 years); 2 University of Medical Sciences partial approval of the program (1 year); And 1 University of Medical Sciences received conditional approval of the program (6 months) and 4 Universities of Medical Sciences received non- approval.

The results of this study are a guide to promote the strengths and eliminate the weaknesses in the implementation of the existing program for universities of medical sciences and a source for decision-making at the macro level and the Ministry of Health, Treatment and Medical Education to grant permission to continue the work, and the activity of the universities is to train the specialized course of family medicine.