Proposed Iranian national standards in nursing and midwifery postgraduate education system

Background: The first stage of the accreditation, process as the most important way of assurance and improvement of the quality of high education process is collection of standards. To describe present and desirable quality of nursing and midwifery postgraduate education via accreditation process in Iran, we decided to compile applicable standards in this field, using available international standards as well as suggestion made by nursing and midwifery education experts in Iran. Methods: This was a multiple triangulation study carried out in the years 2005-2006. First, international standards were extracted from the World Wide Web; then, these standards were used as well as the viewpoints of supervisors to set appropriate national standards. In the third stage, Delphi method was used to take votes. 50 experts in nursing and midwifery postgraduate education of the country were selected by purposive sampling and their suggestions, regarding desirability and applicability of these standards in Iran were used. Results of this stage were analyzed via descriptive statistics using SPSS software. Results: 90% of international standards had appropriate level in Iran. Final comments suggested 28 standards and 224 criteria in master level and 21 standards and 81 criteria in 6 distinct domains in doctorate level of nursing and midwifery. Conclusion: The necessary changes were made in standards based on the experts’ viewpoints and the proposed Iranian national standards in nursing and midwifery postgraduate education system was conducted.