Socially accountable medical education (SAME): How is the knowledge of the educators in medical universities of Iran?: A survey inside Babol University of Medical Sciences.

Sir,

The social accountability of medical schools has been defined as “their obligation to direct education, research, and service activities towards the priority health concerns of the community”.[12] Such a community orientation means practicing medicine, teaching, and conducting research outside the institutional setting of hospital and classroom and involving the public in planning, implementing, and reviewing these activities.[3] Socially Accountable Medical Education (SAME) clarifies the strategic directions of medical schools to become socially accountable, highlighting required improvements to respond to current and future health needs in society, strengthen governance and partnerships with other stakeholders, and to use evaluation and accreditation to assess performance and impact.[4] In Babol University of Medical Sciences, community-oriented medical education has been implemented in educational programs of medical students since the year 1989. In our study 30% of educators were assessed on their knowledge about SAME. Mean of total score was 7.2 ± 1.1 (range: 5-10). Sixty-four percent of faculty members answered seven questions or more (out of 10) correctly. There were no significant relationships between age, sex, education level, school of affiliation, teaching experience of participants, and total score of them about SAME (P-value > 0.05). Although the overall knowledge of educators in this university was good in the most domains related to SAME, essential points to improve community-based medical education such as increasing in the number of educated teachers, continuous assessment of educators and also students (specially about their acquired skills for future service providing to the population), and mandated accreditation of different faculties must be given more attention.[45678]