B. Lindeman is assistant professor, Department of Surgery, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama.
K. Brasel is professor, Department of Surgery, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, Oregon.
Acad Med. 2021 Jul 1;96(7S):S9-S13. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000004107.
Entrustable professional activities (EPAs) have been increasingly used as an assessment framework to formally capture the myriad ad hoc entrustment decisions that occur on a daily basis in clinical settings with learners present. Following the definition of Core EPAs for Entering Residency by the Association of American Medical Colleges in 2014, the American Board of Surgery (ABS) began to explore the utility of EPAs as a framework to support competency-based resident education within general surgery in 2016. As the complement of EPAs drafted for a specialty serve to define the core tasks of a professional within that discipline, initial efforts to define the entire scope of general surgery were fraught with difficulty as no commonly accepted definition of a general surgeon currently exists. Opting to prioritize a pilot of the EPA conceptual framework within surgical training rather than defining the entirety of the specialty, ABS leaders identified 5 EPAs that represent a core of general surgery with which to begin. This article details the process of choosing the initial set of EPAs and provides a roadmap for other disciplines interested in testing the feasibility of this assessment framework while garnering buy-in among the community of educators. Future steps, including implementation of the existing 5 EPAs beyond the initial pilot sites and drafting and implementation of the additional complement of EPAs, are also described.
可委托的专业活动（EPAs）已被越来越多地用作评估框架，以正式捕获在有学习者在场的临床环境中每天发生的无数临时委托决策。在美国医学协会 2014 年定义了进入住院医师实习期的核心 EPAs 之后，美国外科学会（ABS）于 2016 年开始探索 EPAs 作为支持普通外科住院医师基于能力教育的框架的实用性。由于为特定专业起草的 EPA 补充内容有助于定义该学科内专业人员的核心任务，因此最初定义普通外科的全部范围都充满了困难，因为目前还没有普遍接受的普通外科医生的定义。为了在外科培训中优先试行 EPA 概念框架，而不是定义整个专业，ABS 领导层确定了 5 个代表普通外科核心的 EPA 开始。本文详细介绍了选择初始 EPA 集的过程，并为其他有兴趣测试该评估框架可行性的学科提供了路线图，同时在教育者社区中获得认可。还描述了未来的步骤，包括在初始试点站点之外实施现有的 5 个 EPA 以及起草和实施额外的 EPA 补充内容。
