Accreditation
No, WFME does not provide an accreditation process for medical schools. The WFME Recognition Programme grants Recognition Status to individual accrediting agencies normally operating within a specific country that have been evaluated as meeting WFME recognition criteria. Recognised agencies then accredit individual medical schools and programmes of instruction.
The purpose of the WFME Recognition Programme is to provide a transparent and rigorous method of ensuring that accreditation of medical schools, world-wide, is at an internationally accepted and high standard.
WFME assures the standard of accreditation of medical schools, by evaluating accreditation agencies. It provides a system to review and recognise existing accreditation systems on the basis of a transparent process and with public announcement of the results of the assessments.
WFME offers the Recognition Programme to support quality improvement and the maintenance of quality of medical education, world-wide. In 2004 and 2005, WFME worked jointly with the World Health Organization to develop guidelines for accreditation of medical education, and a programme to promote accreditation of medical education.
When the ECFMG, a member of Intealth, introduced in 2010 medical school accreditation by a recognized accrediting agency, it explained that accreditation should use criteria comparable to those used in the USA, or other globally accepted criteria such as the WFME Global Standards for Quality Improvement in Basic Medical Education (BME). For current information on the ECFMG policy, refer to the ECFMG website at www.ecfmg.org/accreditation.
The World Directory of Medical Schools (WDOMS) is a list of medical schools. To be included in the directory, schools must be recognised by the government of the country in which each is situated.
It is the objective of WDOMS to list all the medical schools in the world, with accurate, up-to-date, and comprehensive information on each school. The World Directory defines “medical school” as an educational institution that provides a complete or full programme of instruction leading to a basic medical qualification. Listing does not mean or imply that the school is accredited. WDOMS is working jointly with interested accrediting agencies on a project to include information in the directory on which medical schools are accredited by WFME recognised agencies.
WDOMS is managed jointly by WFME and FAIMER, a member of Intealth.
Accreditation Standards
No. The WFME Recognition Programme does not accredit individual medical schools, but grants Recognition Status to individual accrediting agencies normally operating within a specific country that have been evaluated as meeting WFME recognition criteria. The WFME recognised agencies then accredit individual medical schools. Self-evaluation against WFME standards is not sufficient for WFME recognition.
Only if the external evaluator is an acceptable accrediting agency as set out in the answer to FAQ 5 above.
Only if the accrediting agency is an acceptable accrediting agency as set out in the answer to FAQ 5 above.
According to the WFME Recognition Criteria, the accreditation system must be medicine-specific or possess similar characteristics. A general system for all higher education in the country is not necessarily sufficient to assess and ensure the quality of medical education and its outcomes. In a medicine-specific system, the standards or criteria address the mission and social accountability of the medical school, medical programme outcomes, ensure coverage of subjects in the curriculum such as professionalism, medical ethics and patient safety, and define appropriate content in the biomedical disciplines, behavioural and social disciplines, and the clinical disciplines. The standards and the accreditation process must also include clinical training: through clerkships or rotations in medical disciplines and in a variety of clinical settings. These aspects of medical education must be embraced in an accreditation process for medical education
The accreditation process needs to draw on appropriate expertise by including contributors with academic background or professional interests in medicine, health professions education, and health care in assessing the educational programmes and medical schools and making decisions on accreditation.
By including standards or criteria on medicine relevant topics and by making use of medical expertise in accreditation, a general accreditation system can fulfil the needs of medical education and be recognised by WFME.
Recognition Process
The following types of agencies are eligible to apply for WFME recognition:
a) a government or inter-governmental entity, or
b) an independent professional body that is authorised or recognised by the relevant national or state/provincial government (Ministry of Health or Ministry of Education or both), or the legislator (parliament), or
c) an independent professional body that is authorised or recognised by a professional or scientific association with appropriate authority.
In the WFME Recognition Programme, the criteria for recognition status require that an accrediting agency must work to predetermined, agreed to and publicly available standards, which must be appropriate to the local context. The standards used may be the WFME standards, or a variant of them, or other standards suitable for the local setting.
WFME developed the Global Standards for Quality Improvement in Basic Medical Education (BME) to guide medical education programme development and evaluation. They are intended for use by institutions, organisations and national authorities responsible for medical education, and to stimulate quality improvement.
No. The accrediting agency should use the standards for basic medical education that are agreed for medical education in the country or region where it operates. The country or region must adopt or develop its own set of standards for basic medical education, which must consider the local needs, context and culture of medical education and medical care. They may be the WFME BME standards themselves, or be based on those WFME standards, or be a different set of comparable standards.
An application to the Recognition Programme usually takes 12-18 months, from submission of eligibility application through to Recognition Status decision. A detailed timeline is available here.
There is no exact percentage of the Criteria for Recognition that must be fulfilled provided that the overall assessment shows the accrediting agency to be working at an acceptable level. The assessment procedure is rigorous, and it is likely that to be successful, an accrediting agency will meet a very high proportion of the criteria.
There is a fee of $1,000 for assessment of the application form. In the event that examination of the application form shows that the agency is not eligible for recognition by WFME, this fee is non-refundable.
The fee for the full process of recognition is $60,000 (inclusive of the $1,000 assessment fee).
These fees are payable by the accrediting agency seeking recognition. In addition, the accrediting agency seeking recognition pays for the travel and accommodation of WFME recognition team members.
The costs of the Recognition Programme include the academic, administrative and clerical support of the programme and specific costs relating to the evaluation of each application. These costs include: the initial assessment of the full application, administrative and logistic support of the WFME recognition team and recognition process, the recognition team’s observation of the accrediting agency during a site-visit to a medical school, and a meeting of the agency’s decision making committee. The fee also covers the costs of preparing the final report, including feedback to the agency, and the meeting of the WFME Recognition Committee.
The fee also supports the further development of the recognition programme.
Contact the WFME office ( accreditation@wfme.org ) to discuss the position. WFME policy is that all eligible accrediting agencies should be able to approach WFME for recognition even if based in a country with low resources.
The WFME office, accreditation@wfme.org and admin@wfme.org
WFME no longer offers advisory visits to an accrediting agency that is planning to apply to WFME for recognition. WFME can provide a list of independent experts who can be approached by an accrediting agency that seeks advice. For further details, consult the WFME office, mailto:accreditation@wfme.org.
WFME does not maintain a publicly available list of medical schools accredited by WFME recognised agencies. However, the World Directory of Medical Schools (WDMS) is currently working jointly with interested accrediting agencies on a project to include accreditation information on medical schools accredited by WFME recognised agencies.
Accrediting Agencies
Accreditation of medical programmes is an important process to enhance the quality of medical education, by verifying that medical schools are competent in the delivery of medical education, and that medical education programmes are suitable. Medical schools, medical students, the profession and the public can advocate with government and other authorities for an accreditation system for medicine.
For accreditation to be trustworthy, it is essential that the experts undertaking assessment of medical schools are able to give an unbiased and dispassionate assessment. If there are so few schools in a country the staff of every medical school know almost all of the staff of every other medical school, this may be impossible. Countries with few medical schools have addressed this problem by (a) using an accrediting agency based in another country or (b) developing an accrediting agency for two or more countries that may be geographically, culturally and linguistically close. Other options may also be possible.
The requirements for an accrediting agency for medical education are set out in “WHO-WFME Guidelines for Accreditation of Basic Medical Education 2005” which can be downloaded from https://wfme.org/publications/. The current WFME Recognition Criteria can be found at https://wfme.org/accreditation/recognition-criteria/.
The creation of such an agency should be a joint endeavour of all the interested parties. It is useful to learn from long-established and well regarded accrediting agencies, and also from the experience of regional associations for medical education.
WFME can offer general advice on accreditation, but does not provide detailed support in the setting up of accrediting agencies. If it were to do so, then there would the risk of a conflict of interest – WFME assessing an agency that it had helped to create.
All accrediting agencies should understand the value of a regular quality assurance and quality improvement process conducted against clear criteria. Participation in the WFME recognition process allows accrediting agencies:
- to assess their own performance against the WFME criteria and implement improvements as necessary,
- to demonstrate to the organisations that fund or support the agency’s commitment to good practice and external review,
- to learn from the collegial interactions with members of the WFME recognition team’s quality improvement recommendations and the recognition report.
The right course of action is to persuade the leadership of the accrediting agency of the advantages of having international recognition of the agency, and therefore also of the standards of medical education in your country.
WFME does not limit the number of agencies from a country permitted to apply for recognition.
Any of the agencies in your country that meet the eligibility requirements (see response to question 5) may apply for recognition (or several may apply), but an agency that is specifically focused on accrediting medical education Programmes may be the most appropriate.
ECFMG Recognized Accreditation Policy
Visit the ECFMG website at www.ecfmg.org/accreditation.
To find out whether your medical school is accredited by a recognised agency, first enquire of your school whether or not it is accredited and if so, by which agency. You can probably also verify this school’s accreditation status on the agency’s website. You can then check whether that agency is recognised by WFME by consulting our website: https://wfme.org/accreditation/accrediting-agencies-status
