Entrustable professional activities

Abstract

Introduction The last 3 decades have seen significant changes in medical education and corresponding assessment of medical trainees. Competency-based medical education provided a more comprehensive model than the previous time-based process but remained insufficient. Introduced in 2005, entrustable professional activities (EPAs) offer a more robust curriculum development and assessment process, especially in regard to clinician-oriented workplace-based assessments. Despite their intuitive match with decisions made in the clinical environment daily by clinicians, the development of specialty-specific EPAs and corresponding culturally situated assessment tools has lagged.

Methods To address this gap, a 90-minute faculty development workshop was created to introduce faculty to EPAs and their assessment and to provide hands-on practice developing and using EPAs.

Results Previous facilitations of this workshop received favorable responses from participants regarding level of detail, understanding of the content, and intent to employ EPAs at their own institutions.

Discussion Implementation of EPAs into the assessment portfolio of medical trainees following this workshop will maximize confidence in determining when a trainee is ready for independent practice.