The first meeting of Secretariat was held in the Ministry of Health and Medical Education on 22nd, February 2016 with the purpose of facilitating the accreditation process for the pole medical universities and the vice-chancellors and directors of these universities all attended the meeting.
In the meeting Dr. Nima Rezaei the consultant in International Affairs of the Deputy for Education in Ministry of Health and Medical Education, Dr. Kheradmand the chairman of the Secretariat, Dr. Nekoofar the director of International Relations, Accreditation and Ranking of Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Dr. Asadi Lari and Dr. Akbari the Deputy for Education in ministry of health and medical education and the vice-chancellors of international affairs of Tehran University of Medical Sciences, and Medical Universities of Shahid Beheshti, Hamedan, Ghazvin, Mazandaran, Gilan, Kerman, Kermanshah, Mashhad, Jondi Shapour, Esfahan, Yazd, Zanjan, Shiraz, Ghom, Urmia and Iran were present.
In the beginning of the meeting Dr. Akbari pointed to the importance of the internationalization of the universities and the importance of this meeting for improving the collaborations of the headquarters and the universities in order to conduct the international accreditation process and also emphasized that the performance of accreditation is a significant investment in the health system of the country.
Dr. Nima Rezaei continued to talk about the role of internationalization in education and explained the innovatory factors in medical education. He further explained that the internationalization of the universities with clear-cut missions such as having and creating an international outlook, international universities in our country, international accreditation in the country and international logistics in Iran is what every university should seek.
Dr. Ali Kheradmand continued with the definition of accreditation, specifically institutional accreditation and the necessity of receiving it. He called accreditation a voluntary subjective process and emphasized that one of the important benefits of international accreditation is the conduction of external evaluation in addition to the internal evaluation. He also added that the national institutional accreditation and the international institutional accreditation overlap each other.
Following the lecture of Dr. Kheradmand, Dr. Nekoofar pointed to the fact that the implementation of international accreditation decreases the costs up to 60%. Then he expatiated the process of implementing international accreditation in pole medical universities in details and step by step.
In the end, the questions raised were answered and a booklet entitled “the implementation of institutional accreditation in selected medical universities” were given to the vice-chancellors and directors of all the attending universities.
Reported by: M.Davoodifar