Designing a Native Model for the Internationalization of Iran's Medical Sciences Universities: A Qualitative Study

Today internationalization has become one of the main concerns of the top universities across the world, because internationalization is a highway for making higher quality, branding, incoming, and academic credibility for them. Considering these conditions, the present study aims to design a conceptual framework of the internationalization of medical universities.
The research method in terms of purpose and nature of the data is practical and qualitative respectively. The participants were 16 academic experts whose purposeful and snowball sampling continued to theoretical saturation. The research tool was semi-structured interviews which was analyzed through Theme Analysis Method and by using the QSR-NViv10 software.
The main findings indicated that the total number of non-repetitive codes was 864 that 69 free nodes were extracted among them based on the conceptual similarities, and these nodes were classified in the form of 10 sub themes and 2 main themes and the native model of Internationalization of Medical Sciences Universities designed based on it.
The designed model includes underlying and superstructure factors that the former indirectly affect the internationalization of medical universities and the latter directly and obviously give an international image to medical universities