The aim of this study is to compare the extent of conformity of the curriculum, core competencies, text and exam reference-book of the ophthalmology clerkship in the undergraduate medical education in Iran.

Conformity analysis is done by lexical and compositional semantic analysis of the main curriculum, review of the expected relevant core competencies and structured information extraction of the textbook of the ophthalmology clerkship in the undergraduate medical education in Iran.

The pre-clerkship ophthalmology clinical education in the medical schools of the Islamic Republic of Iran is a one month mandatory rotation in the undergraduate medical training program. It is equivalent to 3 credits and 130 effective credit hours. It is supposed to be carried out by the ophthalmology faculty members in the department of eye surgery hospital setting. The expected outcomes of the program is supposed to be directed towards the community health sector needs. The comparative study of the content of the assigned ophthalmology textbook, the ophthalmology pre-clerkship national curriculum content coverage and the national expected Core Competencies in the undergraduate medical program in Iran medical schools show that there is about 10 to 30 percent discrepancy among the three.

Due to the fact that the expected competencies recently updated 9 month ago and the discrepancies revealed in this study it is strongly suggested that the ophthalmology pre-clerkship rotation program should be revised, considered that previously developed 7 years ago. By the same reason the textbook should be revised and the content adjusted to the objectives and the expected competencies in the undergraduate medical training program in Iran.