How to Use Entrustable Professional Activities to Evaluate and Teach Physician Trainees

“Entrustable Professional Activities” (EPAs) provide a helpful framework for competency-based assessment. An EPA represents a specialty-specific task that can be entrusted to a learner who has achieved sufficient competency in that area. To be entrusted to perform each of these tasks without supervision, a physician trainee typically must be competent in multiple domains (e.g., patient care, medical knowledge, systems-based practice, practice-based learning and improvement, professionalism, and interpersonal communication). Therefore, entrusting a trainee with a specific professional activity acknowledges their competence in one or more aspects of multiple domains. Clinical teachers can use this concept to more purposefully observe their trainees and provide richer feedback grounded in the actual work expected of practicing physicians.