Mandana Shirazi is a Professor of Medical Sciences at Tehran University (TUMS) and an Affiliated Professor at Karolinska Institute. She started her medical career with a BSc and MSc in midwifery from TUMS and subsequently began working as a faculty member of Midwifery at TUMS. After five years, she started working at the Educational Development Center (EDC) and was later promoted to the position of Executive Manager of the Continuous Medical Education Office.

Mandana then came to KI to study for her PhD, where her thesis focused on the diagnosis and treatment of depression by general practitioners. 

Returning to Iran around 15 years ago, Mandana founded the first Standardised Patient unit in the country at the Educational Development Centre of TUMS. 

Ten years after establishing the SP program in Iran, the Ministry of Health considered High Stake OSCE for the graduation of all medical students, the crucial part of which is SPs. 

In this episode of the KIPRIME podcast, Mandana talks to Alina Jenkins about the importance of using SPs to maintain patient safety and why it was the main focus of her research on the healthcare system in Iran.