Medical Education in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Three Decades of Success

Abstract

Medical education has undergone vast reform following the Islamic Revolution in the last three decades, with remarkable qualitative and quantitative progress having been achieved following the establishment of the Ministry of Health and Medi­cal Education in 1985. There have been rises in the number of medical, dentistry and pharmacy schools from 7 to 36, 3 to 15 and 3 to 11, respectively, and in the numbers of student admissions in all programmes of medical sciences from 3630 to 6177 and teaching staff from 1573 to 13108, in the decades mentioned. The numbers of students in clinical subspecialty and PhD degrees have increased from zero to 268 and 350, respectively. The quality of medical education has improved with increasing field and ambulatory care training, with more emphasis on teaching preventive medicine and a significant rise in the research activities. In conclusion, Islamic Republic of Iran has been successful in upgrading medical education and re­search by the unification of health services and medical education into one ministry.