Strengthening Medical Education through Accreditation: Challenges, Strategies and the Way Forward for Bangladesh

This study explored the challenges faced by medical colleges in Bangladesh in implementing accreditation, a process that is essential for ensuring quality medical education and meeting international standards. While global accreditation frameworks aim to standardize and improve medical training institutions in Bangladesh struggle with issues such as inadequate infrastructure, limited stakeholder awareness and bureaucratic hurdles. The formation of the Bangladesh Medical Education Accreditation Council (BMEAC) under the 2023 Medical Education Accreditation Bill is a positive step, but more research is needed to address implementation barriers. This study was aimed to identify the challenges faced by medical colleges in Bangladesh during the implementation of accreditation processes and to make recommendations to overcome those challenges. A cross-sectional study was conducted with a survey of thirty faculty members from ten medical colleges, equally from government and non government medical colleges in Bangladesh. Most had over 10 years of experience in service (both in academic and administrative areas) and were directly involved in accreditation. After obtaining ethical approval, data were collected via a pre-tested Google Form ensuring informed consent and collected quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS. While all were aware of accreditation, only 36.7% understood the BMEAC standards very well. Infrastructure, faculty development and student-teacher ratios were major concerns-especially in government colleges. Only 60.0% reported regularity of medical education training. Evaluation of faculty was rare (36.7%), but more common in five non-government institutions. Most medical college maintained documentation and curriculum standard; however resource and funding issues were more prevalent in government institutions. Faculty suggested improving readiness through development workshops (93.0%), better guidelines (80.0%), with increasing funding and government infrastructure support for continuous development of medical colleges. Actual challenges addressing through this research can contribute to overcome those with recommendation.