Development of undergraduate nursing entrustable professional activities to enhance clinical care and practice

Nursing education adopts a time-based approach to assess the multifaceted competencies of student nurses. The competency-based approach is preferred historically as it is practical and ensures that individuals deliver effective healthcare practice. However, there remains a gap on how these competencies are actually applied in nursing practice. To facilitate the connection between competencies, competency-based education, and nursing practice, entrustable professional activities (EPAs) can be utilized to translate competencies into clinical practice. EPAs have shown promising results across multiple healthcare specialties and have become the current driving force to facilitate nursing care and practice. Given the limited information of EPAs in nursing education, it is an opportune time to develop EPAs specific to nursing care and practice.

To provide a detailed breakdown on the development of EPAs in nursing education to inform clinical care and practice.

The development stages of EPAs included: i) the formation of a team, ii) the development of the conceptual framework, and iii) the pooling, reviewing, and revising of core EPAs.

A total of ten core EPAs were developed, with sub-EPAs nested within these core EPAs. The EPAs include: 1) patient engagement, 2) patient care and practice, 3) care management, 4) common procedures, 5) safety, 6) urgent care, 7) transition care, 8) patient education, 9) interprofessional collaboration, and 10) palliative care.

The development of EPAs specific to nursing care and practice may offer nursing programs a guide to assist with curricula planning and a basis for developing entrustment assessment tools. The unfamiliarity of EPAs in nursing education may pose as implementation challenges to EPAs. Future research is warranted to evaluate and improve the developed EPAs.