Designing, implementing, and evaluating the process of action plan management at Isfahan Medical School

Planning, organizing, and coordinating are inevitable in pursuing the faculty and university's goals, which cannot be achieved without having desirable goals, prioritization, and AP (action plan). This study designed, implemented, and evaluated APM (Action plan management) to increase the quality of educational, research, and management programs. A developmental study was conducted at Isfahan Medical School in 2019. The participants were selected by census sampling, and the target population comprised all deputies (8 ones) and departments (33 ones). This study was carried out in seven steps with a combined method of reviewing literature, document analysis, focus group, and questionnaire. The steps were forming the APM committee, regulating a planned process, designing and issuing the faculty's general policies, using expertise and getting feedback, monitoring the program, final reporting, and the poll. The response rate of the departments was 90.2%; the highest and lowest comprehensiveness scores of AP were 100% and 38%, and the highest and lowest performance monitoring scores were 100% and 25%. The mean and standard deviation of comprehensiveness and monitoring were 76 ± 0.1% and 69 ± 0.4%, 82 ± 0.1% and 73 ± 0.1%, and 72 ± 0.2% and 63 ± 0.4% in the basic science departments, clinical departments, and deputies, respectively. The highest agreement (4.8 ± 0.4) was related to the items "AP is as one of the important functions of management, looking to the future" and "AP is effective in the development of any organization." Regulating a designed process with a clear guideline, developing 24 general policies for the faculty, forming a committee to monitor the AP, and evaluating and giving feedback to the units were the most important results of this study. Also, the selected departments were introduced, and the progress report was presented to the faculty councils. Further studies were proposed to develop long-term plans, and information management was suggested to measure the progress of different units over time according to the defined goals.