Abstract
Background Understanding the importance of educational accreditation standards for health workforce policymaking is needed more than ever, given the growth of physicians' shortage, circulation, cross-border care. The World Health Organization National Health Workforce Accounts (WHO-NHWA) for education and training could support medical education accreditation goals. Objective The aim of the study was to show the compliance of the Serbian national accreditation standards for undergraduate medical education with the WHO-NHWA indicators for accreditation of education and training of the health workforce. The study highlights the relevance of education accreditation to health workforce development.Methods Based on a review of the official documents, laws, and regulations for national accreditation of medical studies in Serbia, we described the current accreditation standards of the most prominent faculty of medicine in Serbia, the Faculty of Medicine University of Belgrade (FMUB), and compared them with the WHO-NHWA indicators on education and training. Results The national accreditation standards partly match the WHO-NHWA indicators for accreditation of education and training. National standards concentrate on education quality while overlooking social determinants of health and social accountability. Over the last nine years, the freshmen enrollment has a downward trend, and the average duration of a six-year undergraduate study of medicine was 7.2 ± 0.4 years.Conclusion Social accountability and social determinants must be priority standards in future accreditation. Health workforce organizations, civil society, and the community should participate in regulatory bodies for accreditation to establish the appropriate basis for socially accountable and interprofessional education. If applied at the institutional, local, and national levels, the WHO-NHWA indicator system can support medical studies' alignment with the strategy/plan of the health care and health workforce development.