Proposing an Effective Model for Improving Integration the Medical Education System with Health Services at Iran's Ministry of Health and Medical Education

In Iran, the medical education system was integrated with the healthcare provision system in 1985 and finally, it led to the creation of a new ministry titled “Ministry of Health and Medical Education”. Regarding this integration has created some problems, the current study intended to provide an effective pattern for improvement of this integration. The present study is both fundamental and applied in terms of objective. The statistical population of the client study included all of the managers, faculty members and experts in the universities of medical sciences in Khuzestan Province, in southwestern Iran, who were chosen by the use of full census sampling. Finally, 103 people filled in the questionnaires. The data collection instrument was a researcher-devised questionnaire. The data analysis was done by SPSS Ver.24, the descriptive statistics (percentage, mean, and standard deviation), and the inferential statistics (Pearson Correlation Test). In order to increase the effectiveness of this integration, four scenarios were suggested among which, finally “the separation of the medical education from the medical sciences universities and placing under direct supervision of the Minister of Health and Medical Education” with 3.84 (based on a maximum score of 4) achieved the highest score. Based on this score, a model based on the upstream laws of Iran was designed and suggested and in each province, instead of having a unit and independent institution under the title of the university of medical sciences and healthcare services, two separate institutions as “The Provincial University of Medical Sciences” and “The Provincial Health Service Organization” would be created and would work under the supervision of Minister of Health and Medical Education. The results of this study showed that medical education in the health ministry supervised universities is affected by the discussions of the provision of the health and medical care provision. Therefore, to realize it and improve the educational tasks, production of knowledge, and conducting of research in the universities, and protecting it from other departments, an effective pattern has been suggested.