Competency-Based Education Frameworks Across Canadian Health Professions and Implications for Multisource Feedback

Feedback in health professional clinical training is typically the responsibility of the student's own supervisor. However, assessment in competency-based education may be optimized by drawing upon the judgments of multiple assessors. Specific interprofessional competencies have been deemed appropriate for multisource feedback, but these skills may not be uniformly described and therefore performance expectations may differ across disciplines.

We conducted a document content analysis of the educational outcomes for seven Canadian health professional training programs. Competency frameworks for dietetics, medicine, nursing, occupational therapy, pharmacy, physiotherapy, and respiratory therapy were located and systematically compared.

All professions organized educational outcomes according to core competencies. As anticipated, interprofessional competencies of communicator, collaborator, and professional appeared in almost all frameworks, but with distinctions in described emphasis and scope. Evidence-based practice is not typically identified as an interprofessional competency but is similarly widely represented across the majority of disciplines.

Our review suggests common understanding of shared competencies should not be taken for granted insofar as how roles are described across disciplines' educational frameworks. Further study to explore how interprofessional competencies are practically interpreted by clinicians and used to judge students training with their team, but who are outside their own health discipline, is warranted.