Integration of Medical Education in Medical Services: A Cross Sectional Study

Ministry of health and Medical Education (MOH&ME) with the goals of attaining the comprehensive self sufficiency in medical fields and accountability of universities to public health needs were established in Iran in 1985. After that, ministry moved one step towards the integration of medical education into the health services in 1994. A dilemma about returning the system into the prior situation was increased in 2002, during which the parliament tried to change the situation toward disintegration. We have studied the attitudes of key academic persons regarding the segregation of medical universities (MOH&ME establishment) and "Integration" of medical education into the health delivery system. A descriptive, cross sectional and correlation study was conducted on 556 universities staffs in 11 universities throughout the country. We applied a questionnaire with 28 questions on 5 axes. The analytical test used in this study was Pearson chi-square. The most understudied staffs, agreed with Integration philosophy. They believed that, although it seems the quality of medical education has declined, but some effective factors such as increasing admitted students, irregular increasing of universities and self controlling of educational hospitals, deficit of educational budget and other reasons were the main effective causes in this declining of quality, and most of them believed that the reintegration of MOH&ME into the ministry of sciences organization will not benefit for the country. This study has presented some reasons of proposed declining the quality of medical education and some suggestions for development of present system.