Competency is a set of knowledge, skills, behaviors, and attitudes required for the performance of a task or activity. In competency-based medical education, those competencies are referred to as the medical education program objectives (EPOs).
Features of a Competency-based Assessment Program:
- Expected level of performance (benchmark) for each EPO at the end of each phase of training.
- The use of multiple types of assessments (exams, writing assignments, clinical and peer assessments, standardized patients, etc.) to gather information about your knowledge, skills, behaviors, and attitudes.
- Gathering that performance information within and across courses.
- Review of that performance both compared to the benchmark and also the trend or pattern of performance.
- Making a final decision about competency attainment by a committee based on all of the aggregated information over time.
A complete set of policies for the School of Medicine can be found in the Bulletin.