Abstract

Anatomy is one of the basic essential sciences of medicine, which is recognized as a root that gradually formed other basic medical sciences. Therefore, educational program and curriculum are very important aspects of anatomical science. This study aimed to evaluate and compare training programs of the PhD in anatomical sciences in ten different universities according to European standards. This descriptive -comparative study was conducted using multi-stage sampling method to choose 10 universities from five continents. Then, curricula of PhD in anatomy for ten selected universities were compared to Iranian curriculum according to European standards. Data were collected using information provided in official website of respective universities. In this study, we evaluated eight elements of the training programs in which three elements including duration of program, educational content and educational levels of the ten selected universities were consistent with European standards. However, we found no information regarding duration of PhD program in the Iranian curriculum. Our findings indicated that African universities perform weaker than other universities. In addition, training program of doctoral anatomy in Iran showed satisfactory standards in comparison to other universities across the world. The training program in Iran was consistent with the world's greatest universities as well as European standards. Hence, future studies are recommended to focus on the correct implementation of training programs.