Higher Educational Concurrence in the Field of Health and Internationalization of Medical Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review

Introduction: Foundation of higher education  in each country  are focused on : more access to education, improving the quality of education, and increasing educational justice in society. Internationalization of higher education in the field of medical education is the process of purposeful integration of international, intercultural, or global dimensions in medical education to improve its quality and prepare graduates for professional activities in the world. In this study, the educational measures taken during the COVID -19 pandemic were examined and its adaptation to the internationalization program of medical education was performed. Methods: This systematic review was performed, on articles published with Iranian origin in both Persian and English languages about internationalization of medical education during the Corona COVID-19 pandemic and extracted from the Scopus database, Web of Science, PubMed, Cochrane Library, Medlib, Science Direct, Google Scholar, Irandoc, Magiran, and SID, from 2020 to 2021, by using the selected keywords including: Corona virus, COVID-19 , Medical education , Internationalization and  IRAN. Search result consist of 1490 articles and after reviewing and deleting duplicate and unrelated articles and using the evaluation checklist, 20 related articles were selected and entered into the study. Results: The systematic review of 20 selected articles indicated that the occurrence of the Corona COVID-19 pandemic expressed synchronicity of changing the educational culture of medical universities and the teaching-learning paradigm shift. These changes increased students' self-confidence and faculty members᾽ effort to empower themselves. Educational  infrastructure (software and hardware) were reviewed and appropriate solutions to solve the problems were presented. Conclusion: The proceeding to change the attitude of learners and teachers toward the use of virtual education, along with appropriate infrastructure design of technologies, appropriate cultural context, implementation of content development workshops, creating the necessary software and hardware infrastructure as well as motivating teachers and students to have using the virtual education system to reduce current challenges and promoting educational process were effective. The medical education in the Corona outbreak was not only successful in improving the quality of education but also responded to the three concerns of the country's higher education in the field of health to create access, improve the education quality and increase justice and educational equality and achieving global legitimacy.