The ISAT Self-Assessment Tool for Social Accountability of Faculties of Medicine: From Theory to Practice

Abstract

Faculties of Medicine are being urged to engage more and more in social accountability (SA), defined as the obligation to orient their education, research, and service mandates to respond to population needs. A concrete tool for SA institutional self-assessment (ISAT) was developed and has been housed since 2021 under The Network: Towards Unity for Health (TUFH). Standards and relevant indicators are included for each of the following components: students, faculty, educational program, research, governance and stakeholder partnership/engagement, school outcomes, and societal impact. The ISAT approach involves a wide consultation of stakeholders in order to identify the progress of the institution on a gradient of four developmental phases for each of the components. We found that the ISAT process can be divided into a sequence of four steps: planning, data collection and validation, assessment of developmental phases, and development of an action plan. Ensuring available human resources may be challenging. The movement towards greater SA can be viewed as an iterative loop that requires going through the sequence more than once to achieve institutional objectives. ISAT is an accessible and constructive tool that fosters continuous improvement of an academic health institution’s capacity to achieve its SA mandate.