Growth trends in medical specialists education in Iran; 1979 - 2013

Over the past 35 years Iran had significant quantitative progress in postgraduate medical education; and growth in specialist's physician workforce supply. Health and medical education policy makers have struggled with many issues related to physician supply, such as determining the sufficient number of physicians workforce and the appropriate number to train; establishing new medical schools; the diversity of specialty programs; efforts to increase the supply of physicians in specialty level in remote and rural areas; and the growing number of female physicians and its impact on health services. After establishment of Ministry of Health and Medical Education (MoHME) in Iran, expansion of medical specialty education was a priority. Since then, great advances have been made in training of new specialty programs. Despite of these brilliant advances during the last decades in Iran, there has been no integrated and comprehensive documentation of previous and current growth trend, yet. To understand where Iranian physician supply and specialty training is headed, we examined the Iranian medical specialist's trends from 1979 to 2013 in a national study by support of Iranian academy of medicine. This paper documents the growth trend of medical specialist's workforce over the past 35 years. Examining the health manpower growth trends allow health and medical education policy makers to plan innovative strategies for the purposeful development of postgraduate medical education to ensure that in future there would be sufficient physicians supply, with the right skills, in the right places in response to population demands.