From leadership research to district action: Impacts of the Accreditation Process for Undergraduate Medical Schools: A Scoping Review

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

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Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: research-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

ABSTRACT Objective The objective of this study is to identify, synthesize and communicate research findings; identify research gaps; and formulate recommendations for future research regarding the impact of the accreditation process on undergraduate medical schools around the world. Method This scoping review followed the recommendations of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‐Analyses–extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA‐ScR). The electronic search was performed up to March 2024 to identify studies that investigated the impact of the accreditation process on undergraduate medical schools. Two independent reviewers performed the selection process and extracted data from the included studies to perform a qualitative analysis. Results The search identified 5148 references. After the selection process, 31 studies from 14 countries were included for data extraction. Studies highlighted five main themes: curricular and governance changes, continuous quality improvement, students' performance, school recognition and student satisfaction, and accreditation data sharing proposal. Three studies presented negative points related to accreditation process. Conclusion The accreditation process induced both positive impacts and negative burdens for undergraduate medical schools. Continuous quality improvement is a common element identified by studies to help stakeholders ensure that accreditation improves the quality of medical education and, consequently, the health care provided. Experiences with accreditation should be shared and reported to improve the quality of medical education worldwide. Future studies must be carried out with a clear description of the domains and criteria considered during the accreditation process as well as the outcome measures used. Keywords: accreditation, evaluation, undergraduate medical education

Study methods

We performed a scoping review of the literature in accordance with the Cochrane Collaboration Guidelines [11] and following the recommendations for conducting scoping reviews [12, 13]. This scoping review was reported following the recommendations of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‐Analyses–extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA‐ScR) [12].

Limitations

The electronic search was carried out using terms in English, and no restriction filters were applied to the language or year of publication. However, no searches were carried out in other languages or specific databases from European, Asian and African countries, which probably limited the identification of studies about the accreditation process in these countries.

A 90-day district inquiry

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Leticia C Girotto; Karynne B Machado; Roberta F C Moreira; Milton A Martins; Patrícia Z Tempski. Impacts of the Accreditation Process for Undergraduate Medical Schools: A Scoping Review. The Clinical Teacher (2025-04-01). https://doi.org/10.1111/tct.70031

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.