Could Entrustable Professional Activities mediate teaching-care integration services in the community?

Competency-based medical education (CBME) is currently the most common type of curriculum used worldwide. However, its limitations include fragmented learning and difficulties to use properly the knowledge, skills, and attitudes acquired using this educational model. Having this in mind, Entrustable Professional Activities (EPA) emerge as a tool to mediate the transfer of the competency-based curriculum into physicians’ professional practice in graduate medical education. Therefore, based on a narrative review of the existing literature on EPA and the authors’ experience in teaching community-based health care integration services, the aim of this paper is to reflect on the possible use of these activities in undergraduate medical education for the development of a CBME model integrated with primary health care and community medicine. The reflections presented here allow suggesting that, although it is a challenging process, incorporating EPA into undergraduate medical education is appropriate to improve the provision of primary health care to individuals, families, and communities in general.