The MOE's Working Committee for the Accreditation of Medical Education (WCAME), the only agency to accredit medical education programs in China, has been awarded Recognition Status by the World Federation for Medical Education (WFME), signaling that the quality of China’s standards in medical education and accreditation mechanisms has reached an appropriate and rigorous standard.
The WFME was co-founded in 1972 by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Medical Association (WMA). It is an international nongovernmental organization committed to safeguarding the quality of medical education worldwide, playing an essential role in the development of global medical education standards and the promotion of medical education reform. In the world’s health sector, only WFME-recognized medical education accreditation agencies can issue accreditations that are generally recognized, and only graduates from medical schools recognized by such agencies will be generally accepted.
Since the inception of its pilot accreditation of medical education in 2006, China has strived to develop an accreditation system that meets internationally accepted standards, by engaging the participation of accreditation professionals invited from the US, Australia, Republic of Korea and Europe in its accreditation practice. WCAME was officially established by the MOE in 2008. WCAME has built an accreditation system with international substantial equivalence and completed accreditation of clinical medical education for 106 (accounting for 76.3% of all) medical education institutions in China.
WCAME began its application for WFME's recognition in 2018 and underwent a field inspection conducted by experts from the WFME recognition program in October 2019. In June 2020, WFME announced that WCAME could be awarded recognition status and recognized the accreditation process, post-accreditation monitoring and decision making by WCAME when it accredited medical schools and programs was to an appropriate and rigorous standard.
As of June 2020, 23 medical education accrediting agencies across the world have been recognized by WFME, including in China, the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Russian Federation, Netherland, Mexico and Brazil.
