Developing Accreditation Standards for Undergraduate Health Professions in Iran

Background: Program accreditation is one of the approaches to improve the quality of educational programs and is increasingly used in medical science education. Considering the lack of a program accreditation model at the undergraduate level of medical sciences in Iran.Objectives: The present study was conducted to develop accreditation standards for educational programs at the undergraduate level.Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in 2020-2021 using a mixed qualitative-quantitative method in two phases. In the first and qualitative phase, the qualitative opinions of nine experts in the basic fields and standards (assessed by the research team in the previous descriptive-comparative study) were obtained by holding a focus group (semi-structured interview). In the second and quantitative phase, the obtained accreditation domains and standards were prepared as an online questionnaire and sent to 16 Iranian experts to confirm the final standards. After analyzing the data, the accreditation standards for undergraduate educational programs were proposed.Results: According to our results, 12 domains and 69 criteria were proposed as accreditation standards for educational programs. The results of the analysis of content validity ratio and content validity index showed that the values of all 12 domains and 69 criteria were higher than 0.49 and 0.7, respectively. As a result, all domains and criteria were approved. Moreover, the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) in all 12 domains was higher than 0.96, indicating an excellent ICC in the proposed domains.Conclusion: Providing the framework of local program accreditation standards and criteria helps improve and promote the quality of medical science educational programs and leads to the higher trust of domestic and foreign stakeholders in these programs.