A Review on Pathology of the Integration of Medical Education System with Health Services at Iran's Ministry of Health and Medical Education

Background: By expressing strengths and weaknesses and their classification, the pathology helps managers in preventing them to provide superficial and simple solutions. Therefore, this research as a review deals with the pathology of the project of integrating the medical education system with health services in the Ministry of Health and Medical Education. Methods: The data collection for this review has been carried out considering the statements of the former and current ministers of health in Iran, as well as through the search of published articles on Iranian and international valid sites (SID, MAGIRAN, Iranmedex, GoogleScholar, Embase, PubMed, Scupus, Science Direct) and with searching the words “Integration of the medical education system with health services”, without limitation of language and since the beginning of 1985 (since the start of this integration). Finally, 9 relevant researches were studied. Results: There are a lot of controversies about the advantages and disadvantages of this project. But most reports indicate that the integration of medical education with health areas has led to the development of specialized human resources and the improvement of health indices, on the one hand. On the other hand, it has reduced the quality of medical education and the provision of health services in educational hospitals. However, the results of some researches showed that the lowering of the quality of medical education, that some believe it has occurred in this period, may be due to other factors and not related to the integration itself. Conclusion: Considering the adaptation of this project to Iran's superior documents, the high cost of reintegrating medical education into the Ministry of Sciences, Researches and Technology, its positive impact on the improvement of some health indices and the praising of the World Federation of Medical Education for the project, It seems that there is currently no possibility of differentiating the two parts of medical education and health services; the management of this integration is only reasonable way for the medical education and treatment system.