Competency-Based Medical Education

If your institution is new to CBME please view this additional learning module to prepare to launch CBME with Elentra: http://bit.ly/CBMELaunchReadiness

The Competency-Based Medical Education module allows institutions to map entrustable professional activities (EPAs) and link them to key and enabling competencies and milestones. In turn this allows the creation of assessments and the collection of learner performance data, all tied to EPAs.

Different institutions will be using Elentra differently to help them transition to CBME. It is important to note that there are some features relevant to CBME that rely on the use of the Assessment and Evaluation module. Using CBME without any additional features like rotation scheduling, you will be able to map EPAs and milestones, use supervisor, procedure and field note form templates to generate 'triggerable' assessment forms, create Periodic Performance Assessment and Rubric forms that are linked to EPAs (and also triggerable), allow faculty and learners to trigger assessment forms, store and report on learner performance data based on the previously mentioned forms, assign faculty as competence committee members and academic advisors, log meetings, and use the CBME dashboard (including promoting learners through stages).

Beginning to use Elentra for CBME can be broken down into several tasks: mapping your EPAs, building forms, setting up learners and faculty to access the forms, and reviewing and reporting on learner progress.

Setting up CBME Curriculum Tags

Before institutions can map their EPAs or use the CBME features within the assessment and evaluation module, specific curriculum tag sets must be in place. These are the required steps to build the necessary tag sets:

1. Auto-setup the required curriculum tag sets through the CBME tab. This happens once for an organization and populates roles, stages, and contextual variables.

2. Populate the CanMEDS Key and Enabling Competencies at the organization level. This is completed through Manage Curriculum and happens once for an organization. Even if your organization will be using program specific objectives, you are still required to upload a standard set of key and enabling competencies.

3. Import EPAs, key and enabling competencies, milestones and contextual variable responses (e.g. options for case complexity or clinical setting) through a program's CBME tab. This happens for each program using CBME.

4. Define and upload procedure attributes to make use of the procedure form template. Procedure attributes become assessment criteria for procedures. Each program using CBME will need to upload procedure attributes but this can be completed later than the other imports. It may be preferable to complete this step when programs are ready to build their assessment and evaluation tools.

After curriculum tags are setup: Form template creation

Once the required curriculum tags sets are in place and populated, an institution can begin to use assessment and evaluation features linked to CBME. A series of form templates can be completed at the program level to facilitate assessment of learners.

1. Supervisor Form Template

2. Procedure Form Template

3. Field Note Form Template

Using these form templates allows Elentra to rely on the mapped EPAs, competencies, milestones and contextual variables to generate and publish multiple forms based on the parameters established on each form template.

Additional assessment forms can also be used for CBME. These include:

1. The Periodic Performance Assessment Form

2. The Rubric Assessment Form

As long as items added to these forms are linked to an EPA the form will be triggerable once it is published. Note that using these forms allows you to add customized questions or prompts and that you can build those items either in advance or during form creation using the Assessment and Evaluation module.

If you want to be able to create additional customized forms and distribute them to learners and/or faculty based on rotation schedules, specific learning events, etc. you must be using additional features of Elentra.

Managing Faculty and Learners

Through the Groups function of a course page, set up optional Academic Advisor Groups to link faculty members to groups of learners. Academic Advisors will be able to view the CBME dashboard for all of their associated learners.

Through the Course Contacts section of a Course Setup page, set up Competence Committees to allow groups of faculty to review learner performance and make decisions regarding learner progress through the required stages.

Once they are set up, learners and faculty can trigger and complete CBME assessment forms. Completed forms are stored on the learner's CBME dashboard.

Reviewing and Reporting on Learner Progress

The CBME dashboard is one place to review learner progress and the different forms completed on a learner. From the CBME dashboard Stages tab, users can quickly see learner progress in different EPAs and stages and see an overview of completed forms and performance trends on the global assessment ratings on those forms. An aggregated report of learner performance in an EPA is available directly from the Stages tab of the CBME dashboard.

From the CBME dashboard you can also access an Assessments tab which allows you apply a variety of filters, search in forms, and view completed, in progress, pending and deleted forms where the learner is the target of the form.

As learners and faculty review and discuss forms a variety of additional tools are available including the ability to pin comments, items, and forms, a way to log meeting notes, and the ability for learners to give a "thumbs up" to a completed form. This information becomes accessible to the learner and faculty and in some cases dedicated tabs give easy access to it (see below).

Additional tabs accessible from the CBME dashboard include Assessment Items (a view of individual items completed on the learner), Trends (visualizations of learner performance), Comments (access to all comments in one place) and Pins (view of anything residents or faculty have pinned for review).

In addition to the CBME dashboard, learner progress can be reviewed and reported from the learner's Assessments page where tasks completed on the learner, as well as a variety of forms where the learner is the target or the evaluator can be viewed. Reports are accessible from this page as well however those reports only apply to forms managed via distributions, not CBME forms triggered by faculty or learners.