What are Entrustable Professional Activities?

Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) describe essential work undertake by doctors. They describe units of professional practice (tasks or responsibilities) that are untrusted to medical trainees to undertake in an unsupervised manner once sufficient competencne has been achieved. Essentially an EPA trainslated competency into clinical practice. EPAs are used by many Australian Colleges to describe the key work of doctors (including surgical, physician and GP trainees) and evaluate the ability of trainees to undertake these tasks without supervision.

EPAs at the Prevocational training level

The introduction of EPAs to Australian prevocational training from 2024 will increase consistency across medical training space and prepare prevocational junior doctors for the expectations at other training levels. The prevocational training EPAs have been developed by the Australian Medical Council (AMC) using the Royal Australasian College of Physician Basic Training Curriculum EPA structure and content, with permission. The EPAs will become a part of the mandatory assessment requirements for prevocational training (PGY1 & PGY2 years) in 2024, and will used with mid and end-of-term assessments to increase valuable feedback for junior doctors.

The AMC’s Training and Assessment document provides the following detailed information about the EPAs:

• Description of the EPAs, assessment of EPAs and how they fit within the broader assessment schedule (pages 45-50)

• Relationship between outcome statements, end-of-term assessments and assessments of EPAs (page 51)

• How EPAs are utilised for improving performance (pages 53-54)

• Assessment requirements of EPAs and the process for certifying completion (pages 57-59)

• EPA assessment forms (pages 75-86)

• Accreditation Standards related to EPAs (Standard 2.3 Assessment requirements, page 18).

For additional information, please view the AMC website.