Entrustable Professional Activities: Teaching and Assessing Clinical Competence

Entrustable Professional Activities are gaining acceptance as tools to demonstrate acquisition of competencies in a competency-based curriculum. The main advantage of Entrustable Professional Activities are that they are observable activities (thus assessable), are related to day-to-day functioning as a health care provider (thus relevant), and are awarded once the learner can be trusted to perform the activity effectively and safely, without supervision, and by integrating across different competency domains. In this article, we describe how Entrustable Professional Activities can serve as a useful learning and assessment tool. We have described the steps in formulation, the pitfalls to avoid, and the possible role of the Medical Council of India and the Indian Academy of Pediatrics in encouraging the use of Entrustable Professional Activities for executing competency-based modules.