Procedural Skills of the Entrustable Professional Activities: Are Graduating US Medical Students Prepared to Perform Procedures in Residency?

PURPOSE: Competency-based medical education has been successfully instituted in graduate medical education through the development of Milestones. Consequently, the Association of American Medical Colleges implemented the core entrustable professional activities initiative to complement this framework in undergraduate medical education. We sought to determine its efficacy by examining the experiences and confidence of recent medical school graduates with general procedural skills (entrustable professional activities 12).

METHOD: We administered an electronic survey to the MedStar Georgetown University Hospital intern class assessing their experiences with learning and evaluation as well as their confidence with procedural skills training during medical school. Simple linear regression was used to compare respondent confidence and the presence of formal evaluation in medical school.

RESULTS: We received 28 complete responses, resulting in a 33% response rate, whereas most respondents indicated that basic cardiopulmonary resuscitation, bag/mask ventilation, and universal precautions were important to and evaluated by their medical school, this emphasis was not present for venipuncture, intravenous catheter placement, and arterial puncture. Mean summed scores of confidence for each skill indicated a statistically significant effect between confidence and evaluation of universal precaution skills.

CONCLUSIONS: More advanced procedural skills are not considered as important for graduating medical students and are less likely to be taught and formally evaluated before graduation. Formal evaluation of some procedural skills is associated with increased confidence of the learner.