Competency-based resident education: The United States perspective

Abstract

Competency-based medical education is an educational paradigm that focuses on all trainees demonstrating the competencies required for effective function in their role prior to moving on to the next phase of training. Entrustable Professional Activities are an increasingly utilized framework for assessment as part of competency-based medical education. They can be best thought of as units of work for a physician, and they place assessment within the context of a clinical encounter by providing a holistic view of the degree of supervision that a learner requires for a given task. Entrustable Professional Activities were first defined for medical students in the United States as the Core Entrustable Professional Activities for Entering Residency from the Association of American Medical Colleges and have been expanded to the graduate medical education space. A core subset of Entrustable Professional Activities has been defined for general surgery and is currently being piloted by 26 institutions across the country. Along with outcomes from this pilot, considerations around implementation, faculty development, and shared mental models of the practice standard for each Entrustable Professional Activities will be important going forward.