International accreditation and quality medical education; the need for establishment in middle east

Dear Editor We read with a great interest the recent article by Pulido 1 that published in your journal in which he addressed the role of increasing number of medical schools on the efficacy of medical education and the training of futures doctors. In this article the author emphasized on the social accountability and the commitment of medical schools for reflect critically and enhancing the quality of their graduates. Finally he suggest an accreditation system with certain objectives including adjustment of medical education with modern technologies, preparing doctors for needs and expectations of a globalized society and educating lifelong learning skills to physicians. Here in Iran like other developing countries in the Middle East region, the need for enhancing health care system forced the government to increase the number of physicians to reach the appropriate patient to physician ratio. Hence, quick increase in the number of medical schools and excessive admitting of medical students implemented in Iran. While this trend leads to train lots of junior doctors across the country, the quality of their training program and their clinical competency seems to be neglected. On the other hand, much concern has been expressed about the caliber of many junior doctors from these various institutions. Moreover, due to overwhelming number of junior doctors in some parts of country, there is lack of appropriate clinical opportunities for junior doctors as General Physicians (GP) and the lack of clinical experience leads to distrust of general population toward GPs. Therefore, majority GP doctors are eager to study for residency course instead of doing their clinical duties. So, the depletions must be identified and appropriate changes made, for enhancing the quality and standards of medical education for undergraduates. Altogether, the need for an organization which evaluates the competency of graduates of medical schools is highly obvious in developing countries of our region. As the author underlined the essentiality of the issue of accreditation for institutes both for undergraduate and post graduate students by mentioning the " lifetime of continuing education ". It is well known that traditional continuing medical education has a limited impact on their clinical behavior and the requirement for continuous learning as part of a doctor's professional career is obvious. However, the appropriate ways of introducing and implementing this learning is a matter of controversy in many countries even in a developing country, like Iran. Continuing medical education should meet the doctors' …