Family-Educator Partnership in the Development of Entrustable Professional Activities in Complex Care.

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Pediatrics
• Patient Advocacy

Background:

• Developing entrustable professional activities (EPAs) typically excludes patient and family input.
• Children with medical complexity (CMC) require strong family partnerships in care.
• Families possess unique expertise valuable for healthcare professional training development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe a model for partnering with family leaders in developing EPAs for the care of CMC.
• To highlight the contributions of family leaders in creating patient- and family-centered EPAs.
• To generate recommendations for integrating patient and family voices in EPA development.

Main Methods:

• Recruited family leaders from a national organization.
• Employed a multistage EPA development process from June 2019 to February 2021.
• Integrated family leaders as content experts, editors, and coauthors, utilizing virtual focus groups and content analysis.

Main Results:

• Family leaders actively participated in all phases of EPA development for CMC care.
• Substantive revisions to EPAs were recommended by family leaders, including language, content, and scope of practice.
• Content analysis yielded 10 recommendations for patient- and family-centered EPA descriptions.

Conclusions:

• The developed process demonstrates effective integration of families into competency framework creation for CMC care.
• Family leader recommendations provide a transferable guide for patient- and family-centered EPA development in other medical specialties.