BACKGROUND: Self-study and site visit are two main steps of institutional accreditation, but the divergence between the point of view between internal and external evaluators is always considered to be the major challenge to all types of accreditation. In this regard, the aim of this study is to compare the results obtained from self-study and site visit of accreditation standards in teaching hospitals. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A descriptive analytical study was conducted using secondary data in 2021. The examined sample included the accreditation documents of five teaching hospitals having performed self-assessment and external evaluation in 2018. Data analysis was done using descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation) and analytical statistics (independent t -test) for each. Statistical analysis was conducted with IBM SPSS Statistics 25.0. RESULT: The results obtained from the comparison of mean in the area of “monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of the educational system” showed that there was a significant statistical difference between the results of self-study and those of external evaluation ( P = 0.01). They also indicated that the external evaluators assessed the level of the standard higher than self-evaluators. In other standards, there was no significant difference between the results obtained from review of self-assessors and external evaluators. CONCLUSION: The findings showed the difference between the results from self-study and external evaluation only in “monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of the educational system.” The close similarity between the result of internal and external evaluators can be caused by two factors: the clarity of standards and the quantitative nature of hospital accreditation, and the proper training of evaluation teams. Setting the basic criteria for choosing valuable assessors and providing effective training in the field of accreditation can be play an important role in congruency between the results.
Jokar et al. (Sun,) studied this question.