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Entrustable professional activities (EPAs) describe activities that qualified professionals must be able to perform to deliver safe and effective care to patients. The entrustable aspect of EPAs can be used to assess learners through documentation of entrustment decisions, while the professional activity aspect can be used to map curricula. When used as an assessment framework, the entrustment decisions reflect supervisory judgments that combine trainees' relational autonomy and patient safety considerations. Thus, the design of EPAs incorporates the supervisor, trainee, and patient in a way that uniquely offers a link between educational outcomes and patient outcomes. However, achieving a patient-centered approach to education amidst both curricular and assessment obligations, educational and patient outcomes, and a supervisor-trainee-patient triad is not simple nor guaranteed. As medical educators continue to advance EPAs as part of their approach to competency-based medical education, the authors share a critical discussion of how patients are currently positioned in EPAs. In this article, the authors examine EPAs and discuss how their development, content, and implementation can result in emphasizing the trainee and/or supervisor while unintentionally distancing or hiding the patient. They consider creative possibilities for how EPAs might better integrate the patient as finding ways to better foreground the patient in EPAs holds promise for aligning educational outcomes and patient outcomes., (Copyright © 2021 by the Association of American Medical Colleges.)

Construct: This study seeks to determine validity evidence for the Quality of Assessment for Learning score (QuAL score), which was created to evaluate short qualitative comments that are related to specific scores entered into a workplace-based assessment, common within the competency-based medical education (CBME) context. Background: In the age of CBME, qualitative comments play an important role in clarifying the quantitative scores rendered by observers at the bedside. Currently there are few practical tools that evaluate mixed data (e.g. associated score-and-comment data), other than the comprehensive Completed Clinical Evaluation Report Rating tool (CCERR) that was originally derived to rate end-of-rotation reports. Approach: A multi-center, randomized cohort-based rating exercise was conducted to evaluate the rating properties of the QuAL score as compared to the CCERR. One group rated comments using the QuAL score, and the other group rated comments using the CCERR. A generalizability study (G-Study) and a decision study (D-study) were conducted to determine the number of meta-raters for a reliable rating (phi-coefficient target of >0.80). Both scores were correlated against rater's gestalt perceptions of utility for both faculty and residents reading the scores. Results: Twenty-five meta-raters from 20 sites participated in this rating exercise. The G-study revealed that the CCERR group (n = 13) rated the comments with a very high reliability (Phi = 0.97). Meanwhile, the QuAL group (n = 12) rated the comments with a similarly high reliability (Phi = 0.97). The QuAL score required only two raters to reach an acceptable target reliability of >0.80, while the CCERR required three. The QuAL score correlated with perceptions of utility (Meta-rater usefulness, Pearson's r = 0.69, p < 0.001; Perceived usefulness for trainee, r = 0.74, p < 0.001). The CCERR performed similarly, correlating with perceived faculty (r = 0.67, <0.001) and resident utility (0.79, <0.001). Conclusions: The QuAL score is reliable rating score that correlates well with perceptions of utility. The QuAL score may be useful for rating shorter comments generated by workplace-based assessments.

Problem: Competency-based medical education (CBME) demands that residents be directly observed performing clinical tasks; however, many faculty lack assessment expertise, and some programs lack resources and faculty numbers to fulfill CBME's mandate. To maximize limited faculty resources, the authors explored training and deploying faculty to assess residents in specialties outside their own., Approach: In spring 2017, 10 MD and 2 PhD assessors at a medium-sized medical school in Ontario, Canada, participated in a 4-hour training session, which focused on providing formative assessments of patient handover, a core competency of medical practice. Assessors were deployed to 2 clinical settings outside their own specialty-critical care and pediatrics-each completing 11 to 26 assessments of residents delivering patient handover. Assessors were subsequently interviewed regarding their experiences., Outcomes: While assessors felt able to judge handover performance outside their specialty, their sense of comfort varied with their own prior experiences in the given settings. Lack of familiarity with the process of handover in a specific setting directly influenced assessors' perceptions of their own credibility. Although assessors identified the potential benefits of cross-specialty assessment, they also cited challenges to sustaining this approach., Next Steps: Findings indicate a possible "contextual threshold" for cross-specialty assessment: tasks with high context specificity might not be suitable for cross-specialty assessment. Introducing higher-fidelity simulation into the training protocol and ensuring faculty members are remunerated for their time are necessary to establish future opportunities for shared assessment resources across training programs.

Purpose: Novel approaches are required to meet assessment demands and cultivate authentic feedback in competency-based medical education. One potential source of data to help meet these demands is the electronic health record (EHR). However, the literature offers limited guidance regarding how EHR data could be used to support workplace teaching and learning. Furthermore, given its sheer volume and availability, there exists a risk of exploiting the educational potential of EHR data. This qualitative study examined how EHR data might be effectively integrated and used to support meaningful assessments of residents' clinical performance., Method: Following constructivist grounded theory, using both purposive and theoretical sampling, in 2016-2017 the authors conducted individual interviews with 11 clinical teaching faculty and 10 senior residents across 12 postgraduate specialties within the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at Western University. Constant comparative inductive analysis was conducted., Results: Analysis identified key issues related to affordances and challenges of using EHRs to assess resident performance. These include the nature of EHR data; the potential of using EHR data for assessment; and the dangers of using EHR data for assessment. Findings offer considerations for using EHR data to assess resident performance in appropriate and meaningful ways., Conclusions: EHR data have potential to support formative assessment practices and guide feedback discussions with residents, but evaluators must take context into account. The EHR was not designed with the purpose of assessing resident performance; therefore, adoption and use of these data for educational purposes require careful thought, consideration, and care.