Function of Board of Trustees in Iranian State Medical Sciences Universities during Five Periods (1991 to 2016)

Background and Hierarchical decision-making bodies in universities include the board of trustees, the head of university, the board of directors, and the university council. The aim of this research was to determine the function of the board of trustees of state medical sciences universities in Iran during five different periods; 1991 to 2016.
In this descriptive-analytic research we investigated all the directives approved by independent board of trustees in state medical sciences universities affiliated with Iran Ministry of Health and Medical Education in five periods.
The number of meetings held by board of trustees in 47 universities (average of 37 universities per year) was 1999 in which 32680 directives approved. The average number of meetings per year in each board of trustees was 2.08, the lowest was in the second period (1.12) and the highest was in the fifth period (3.04). The average numbers of directives approved in the first and second periods were 10, and in the third, fourth, and fifth periods were 17, 20, and 16 per session, respectively.
Based on the number of meetings per year and the number of directives approved in every meeting, the function of board of trustees from the highest to the lowest was in the fourth, fifth, third, first, and second periods. Compared with the function of type 1 and type 2 universities, the function of type 3 universities was found to be higher. The functional pattern in most tasks and those within the authority of board of trustees during the first 16 years was considerably different between the Ministry of Health and Medical Education and the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology.