A Review on the Different Dimensions of Socially Accountable Medical Schools

Nowadays، the necessity of revising medical education programs towards accountability for societies’ needs are extensively considered. Given the necessity of dealing with this issue in the medical education curriculum of our country، Iran، the aim of the present article was to determine the different dimensions of socially accountable medical schools. In this review study، the Pubmed (http: //www. ncbi. nlm. nih. gov/pubmed)، Google scholar (http: //scholar. google. com/) and Highwire (http: //highwire. stanford. edu/) search engines were searched using “socially”، “accountable”، “medical” and “school” as the keywords. This search strategy retrieved 13 articles. Furthermore، it was tried that by altering the search strategy plus searching the reference lists of the retrieved articles، the most relevant and up-to-date articles were determined. Findings and Evidences suggest that a social accountable medical school is a school in which educational، research، health and medical care programs are revised based on the relevant priorities of a society including health requirements and ethical guidelines. Moreover، the selection criteria of academic members and students plus appraisal programs of medical schools are done in a way that accountability in front of society is considered at the center of attention. Accountability in front of the societies'' needs is one of the most important priority in revising medical education around the word. It is necessary that this goal is also adopted by other health sciences'' schools.