Choosing entrustable professional activities for neonatology: a Delphi study

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Neonatology Fellowship Training
• Competency Assessment

Background:

• Developing standardized assessments is crucial for effective medical training.
• Existing sets of neonatology EPAs required evaluation and refinement.
• Ensuring EPAs are specific, important, and relevant to clinical practice is key.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess and refine candidate neonatology EPAs from two organizations.
• To establish a consensus on essential EPAs for assessing clinical neonatology competence.

Main Methods:

• A two-round Delphi process involving neonatology fellowship directors.
• Participants assessed the importance and scope of 19 candidate EPAs.
• Proposed additional EPAs were evaluated, and scope was refined through specification.

Main Results:

• Initially, 19 candidate EPAs were assessed; four were deemed too broad.
• Respondents retained one broad EPA as proposed and refined three others by specifying entrustment criteria.
• Refined EPAs were re-rated as insufficiently important and rejected; newly proposed EPAs were also deemed not important enough.

Conclusions:

• The Delphi process successfully yielded a set of 13 EPAs for assessing clinical neonatology capability.
• This refined set of EPAs provides a more accurate measure of competence in neonatology practice.