Education for primary care : an official publication of the Association of Course Organisers, National Association of GP Tutors, World Organisation of Family Doctors
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In Canada, family physicians may pursue extended training for added competence in areas such as Palliative Care or Emergency Medicine by applying to Enhanced Skills (ES) programmes. Despite the increasing popularity of ES programmes, there are no studies that examine trends in applications to ES programmes before and after the introduction of family medicine focused competency-based curricula at individual universities. Additionally, there is a scarcity of research examining factors common among applicants to ES programmes. ⋯ Residents in a family medicine competency-based curriculum may be less inclined to extend their training by applying to ES programmes. This is remarkable considering that the Canadian residency programme is the shortest among high-income countries. Further studies are needed to investigate the role of competency-based medical education programmes in enabling shortening residency training around the world.
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Introducing Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) into primary care postgraduate medical education (PGME) programmes may be challenging, due to the general nature of primary care medicine, but trainers and trainees both stand to benefit from their use. We investigated the expectations of trainers and trainees in a primary care PGME programme regarding the use of EPAs. We held two focus group discussions with trainers and four with trainees from the Dutch General Practice training programme, to explore their views on the use of EPAs in their training programme. ⋯ However, they felt that EPAs can be a useful aid to trainee learning. EPAs may help trainers to give trainees specific feedback on their performance. While the use of the classic EPA method in primary care PGME programmes may be challenging, EPAs in such programmes might be more suitable as design and learning tools than as a tool for formal assessment.