Statistical Analysis of Medical Students Admissions to Iranian Medical Schools According to Macro-zoning for Medical Education

Background: Unbalanced distribution of medical student admission, inequities in the distribution of manpower and employment problems are among the difficulties of each health system. The aim of this study was to evaluate the number of admissions of Iranian medical schools in 2014 according to the country divisions, as well as macro-zoning for medical education.
Methods: This descriptive analytical study was performed by using the information of field selection booklet of university entrance exam in Iran in 2014. The information was separated by Azad or Public Universities or private campus admissions for each province and city. The population of each province was extracted from the national census of 2011. The number of admissions in each city and province was extracted and the admission per capita of each province and each medical education macro-zone was calculated. 
Results: Iranian medical schools are established in 49 cities of 31 provinces to train medical students. The overall capacity of medical student admission in 2014 was 4589 individuals, which with regards to the country population of 75,130,000 people represents admission per capita of medicine (admission per thousand population) to be 0.061. Considering the population of each province, the highest admission per capita of medicine was in Semnan (0.246), Southern Khorasan (0.156) and Yazd (0.126) provinces and the lowest was in Alborz (0.013), Northern Khorasan (0.023) and Qazvin (0.033) provinces. Based on the ten macro-zones for medical education, the highest admission per capita was in the macro-zone 1 (0.079) and the lowest was in macro-zone 4 (0.041).
Conclusion: Given that infrastructures of medical schools are currently established in all 31 provinces of Iran, and moreover, more physicians are needed to reach the world average of physician workforce, it appears necessary that while the admission capacity of the zones with higher admission per capita is maintained, the admission of medical schools in the provinces and macro-zones with admission per capita of lower than the national average should be increased.