Research Agenda for Entrustable Professional Activities Among US Surgical Specialties

Abstract

Objective: The authors provide an overview of competency-based medical education, its association with the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education Milestones as a competency framework, a description and outline of the emerging execution of Entrustable Professional Activities in surgical disciplines, and a research agenda focused on Entrustable Professional Activities for American Board of Surgery-certified surgical specialties in the United States.

Background: Advances in surgical care inspire awe consistent with the impact of these developments on patients' lives. With this comes greater knowledge, new practices, and novel technologies for integration into residency training, making the skillset required of today's residents quite different from those in the past. Competency-based medical education and learner-centered approaches offer innovative and studied methodologies for teaching, learning, and assessment to meet the demands of today's educational environment.

Methods: To develop an EPA research framework, we collaborated with an informationist, conducted a PubMed search, and analyzed publications in NVivo for key research themes.

Results: The research agenda includes 5 domains of inquiry: entrustment and practice readiness; bias and environment; distinguishing features and certification; qualitative feedback; and patient outcomes. In addition, the authors provide questions and suggest data integration strategies that might foster a breadth of studies investigating the utility of Entrustable Professional Activities in surgical training.

Conclusions: Collectively engaging in such a process of evaluation early in the process of competency-based reform will serve to optimize education, assessment, and, ultimately, patient care.

Keywords: Entrustable Professional Activities; competency-based medical education; research agenda.