national educational stratification of medical schools in iran

background and purpose: after two decades of expansion of medical schools and increasing the number of medical students as one of the most attainable solutions for the problem of substandard status of iranian community health, recently, quality-based policies in medical education have taken priority over most of the national health plans. to determine differences in the field of education between iranian medical schools by stratifying their educational services. method: to measure the educational performance that could be utilized to rate the schools nationwide, a benchmarking tool, consisting of more than 60 indicators, was devised. each school was asked to introduce a representative who would complete a questionnaire, which was designed to collect schools’ information. in the next step, all the divisions were visited by one of the project’s members and the school’s representative to revise and approve the data. then, data retrieval was performed and verified at the project’s office. finally, a special computer software was exploited to perform the final analysis. results: there were 45 public and private medical schools nationwide, which were stratified based on their individual scores. furthermore, all schools were also ranked in each indicator. conclusion: this study as one of the phases of strategy compilation for educational missions of the national system of medical education, defines the educational strengths and weaknesses of iranian medical schools that could be used as a measure for authorities to determine the developmental limits and current stance of the medical schools; and optimize their budget and facilities.