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The role of accreditation in 21st century health professions education: report of an International Consensus Group

BACKGROUND: Accreditation is considered an essential ingredient for an effective system of health professions education (HPE) globally. While accreditation systems exist in various forms worldwide, there has been little written about the contemporary enterprise of accreditation and even less about i...

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Autores principales: Frank, Jason R., Taber, Sarah, van Zanten, Marta, Scheele, Fedde, Blouin, Danielle
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7520947/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32981519
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-020-02121-5
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author Frank, Jason R.
Taber, Sarah
van Zanten, Marta
Scheele, Fedde
Blouin, Danielle
author_facet Frank, Jason R.
Taber, Sarah
van Zanten, Marta
Scheele, Fedde
Blouin, Danielle
author_sort Frank, Jason R.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Accreditation is considered an essential ingredient for an effective system of health professions education (HPE) globally. While accreditation systems exist in various forms worldwide, there has been little written about the contemporary enterprise of accreditation and even less about its role in improving health care outcomes. We set out to 1) identify a global, contemporary definition of accreditation in the health professions, 2) describe the relationship of educational accreditation to health care outcomes, 3) identify important questions and recurring issues in twenty-first century HPE accreditation, and 4) propose a framework of essential ingredients in present-day HPE accreditation. METHODS: We identified health professions accreditation leaders via a literature search and a Google search of HPE institutions, as well as by accessing the networks of other leaders. These leaders were invited to join an international consensus consortium to advance the scholarship and thinking about HPE accreditation. We describe the consensus findings from the International Health Professions Accreditation Outcomes Consortium (IHPAOC). RESULTS: We define accreditation as the process of formal evaluation of an educational program, institution, or system against defined standards by an external body for the purposes of quality assurance and enhancement. In the context of HPE, accreditation is distinct from other forms of program evaluation or research. Accreditation can enhance health care outcomes because of its ability to influence and standardize the quality of training programs, continuously enhance curriculum to align with population needs, and improve learning environments. We describe ten fundamental and recurring elements of accreditation systems commonly found in HPE and provide an overview of five emerging developments in accreditation in the health professions based on the consensus findings. CONCLUSIONS: Accreditation has taken on greater importance in contemporary HPE. These consensus findings provide frameworks of core elements of accreditation systems and both recurring and emerging design issues. HPE scholars, educators, and leaders can build on these frameworks to advance research, development, and operation of high-quality accreditation systems worldwide.
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spelling pubmed-75209472020-09-30 The role of accreditation in 21st century health professions education: report of an International Consensus Group Frank, Jason R. Taber, Sarah van Zanten, Marta Scheele, Fedde Blouin, Danielle BMC Med Educ Research BACKGROUND: Accreditation is considered an essential ingredient for an effective system of health professions education (HPE) globally. While accreditation systems exist in various forms worldwide, there has been little written about the contemporary enterprise of accreditation and even less about its role in improving health care outcomes. We set out to 1) identify a global, contemporary definition of accreditation in the health professions, 2) describe the relationship of educational accreditation to health care outcomes, 3) identify important questions and recurring issues in twenty-first century HPE accreditation, and 4) propose a framework of essential ingredients in present-day HPE accreditation. METHODS: We identified health professions accreditation leaders via a literature search and a Google search of HPE institutions, as well as by accessing the networks of other leaders. These leaders were invited to join an international consensus consortium to advance the scholarship and thinking about HPE accreditation. We describe the consensus findings from the International Health Professions Accreditation Outcomes Consortium (IHPAOC). RESULTS: We define accreditation as the process of formal evaluation of an educational program, institution, or system against defined standards by an external body for the purposes of quality assurance and enhancement. In the context of HPE, accreditation is distinct from other forms of program evaluation or research. Accreditation can enhance health care outcomes because of its ability to influence and standardize the quality of training programs, continuously enhance curriculum to align with population needs, and improve learning environments. We describe ten fundamental and recurring elements of accreditation systems commonly found in HPE and provide an overview of five emerging developments in accreditation in the health professions based on the consensus findings. CONCLUSIONS: Accreditation has taken on greater importance in contemporary HPE. These consensus findings provide frameworks of core elements of accreditation systems and both recurring and emerging design issues. HPE scholars, educators, and leaders can build on these frameworks to advance research, development, and operation of high-quality accreditation systems worldwide. BioMed Central 2020-09-28 /pmc/articles/PMC7520947/ /pubmed/32981519 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-020-02121-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Frank, Jason R.
Taber, Sarah
van Zanten, Marta
Scheele, Fedde
Blouin, Danielle
The role of accreditation in 21st century health professions education: report of an International Consensus Group
title The role of accreditation in 21st century health professions education: report of an International Consensus Group
title_full The role of accreditation in 21st century health professions education: report of an International Consensus Group
title_fullStr The role of accreditation in 21st century health professions education: report of an International Consensus Group
title_full_unstemmed The role of accreditation in 21st century health professions education: report of an International Consensus Group
title_short The role of accreditation in 21st century health professions education: report of an International Consensus Group
title_sort role of accreditation in 21st century health professions education: report of an international consensus group
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7520947/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32981519
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-020-02121-5
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