An online post-accreditation visit of an international team of peer review experts

On April 20, 2022 Grodno State Medical University hosed an online post-accreditation visit of an international team of peer review experts as part of the implementation of the Erasmus KA2 international technical assistance project «Setting peer review instruments and goals for medical (health) education» / SPRING, registered with the Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Belarus on July 27, 2020 (Reg. No №2/20/001096).  This instructional follow-up mission was organized aimed to train the University staff in international accreditation procedures.

The follow-up mission was organized according to the standards of the World Federation for Medical Education (WFME) and took place over four online sessions. Sessions 1 and 2 were attended by the University administration, faculty, students of the Faculty of International Students. Session 3 was a review team meeting for making tentative summary conclusions. Session 4, the final session – debriefing and feedback session – was organized for providing recommendations and conclusion by the team of experts.

The experts were Prof. Leila Akhvlendiani, BAU Batumi International University, Faculty of Medicine, Batumi, Georgia; Prof. Ludmila Turgunova, Karaganda State Medical University, Karaganda, Kazakhstan; Assoc. Prof. Virginia Salaru, State University of Medicine and Pharmacy. N. Testemitanu, Chisinau, Moldova; Prof. Khuseyn Egamnazarov, Avicenna Tajik State University, Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

The expert team appreciated the high level of achievements of GrSMU and the great progress that our University has made since the date of base-line mission in June 2021.

The recommendations and suggestions were made to improve the English version of the University website; to provide more vivid information about the University for the potential foreign consumers of educational services; to organize student mobility and summer educational practice for students of the Medical Faculty for International Students; to support employees and students in the preparation of scientific publications in journals included in well-known knowledge-intensive databases; to involve students and alumni into the process of educational programs improvement.

It is worth mentioning that Grodno State Medical University has become the first among the consortium of universities united by the SPRING project (14 universities from 7 countries), which successfully completed all three stages of the instructional accreditation procedure: self-assessment of the quality of activities, accreditation and post-accreditation mission.

As part of the SPRING project, two employees of the State Medical University from among the members of the working group were also involved as experts in similar procedures for assessing the quality of activities of partner universities from Georgia.

In general, the implementation of the project objectives allowed the participants to gain practical experience in conducting international accreditation procedures according to the WFME criteria, to study the best practices and positive experience of partner universities, to present the export potential of Grodno State Medical University, and to support international cooperation.

In the nearest future, the final recommendations and suggestions of the expert team will be submitted, and will be used to improve the quality of GrSMU further performance.