Proposed Iranian national standards in nursing and midwifery postgraduate education systemProposed Iranian national standards in nursing and midwifery postgraduate education system

The first stage of the accreditation, process as the most important way of assurance and improvement of thequality of high education process is collection of standards. To describe present and desirable quality of nursing and midwiferypostgraduate education via accreditation process in Iran, we decided to compile applicable standards in this field,using available international standards as well as suggestion made by nursing and midwifery education experts in Iran. This was a multiple triangulation study carried out in the years 2005-2006. First, international standards wereextracted from the World Wide Web; then, these standards were used as well as the viewpoints of supervisors to set appropriatenational standards. In the third stage, Delphi method was used to take votes. 50 experts in nursing and midwiferypostgraduate education of the country were selected by purposive sampling and their suggestions, regarding desirabilityand applicability of these standards in Iran were used. Results of this stage were analyzed via descriptive statistics usingSPSS software. 90% of international standards had appropriate level in Iran. Final comments suggested 28 standards and 224 criteriain master level and 21 standards and 81 criteria in 6 distinct domains in doctorate level of nursing and midwifery. The necessary changes were made in standards based on the experts'' viewpoints and the proposed Iranian nationalstandards in nursing and midwifery postgraduate education system was conducted.