Entrustable professional activities: a new proposal for the evaluation of the medical competencies

Medical education migrated from a practice-based to a knowledge-based discipline after the publication of the Flexner Report. The emergence of competence-based medical education led to a greater standardization of teaching, allowing students to integrate knowledge, skills and attitudes for the execution of a given task. A challenge is the evaluation of learning. Complex evaluation systems and a consequent atomization that independently assesses different competence components. However, the evaluation carried out at the clinical practice sites allows assessing the overall level of learning. Supervisors observe students' performance and decide if the apprentice can execute a specific task independently. This decision is based upon the trust that the tutor places on the student. Consequently, Ten Cate (2005) proposed the term Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs), as a framework for professional practice tasks or responsibilities that can be fully entrusted to students, when they demonstrate the competences that are necessary to execute such activity with an increasing level of autonomy.