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POSTGRADUATE MEDICAL EDUCATION

Competency Based Medical Education

RCPSC Policies / Technical Guides and Guidelines

Expandable List

This policy defines expectations for the application of revised iterations of a discipline’s standards, requirements.  It can be described as the ‘next stage’ approach.  In a nutshell it is as follows:  

  • New residents will be registered in the most recent version.
  • Current residents will move to the newest version once they have been promoted to the next stage.

Principles

  • National standards ensure consistency; this policy will ensure transition to new standards will happen the same across the country.
  • Changes will be applied in a timely way so that residents are held to the most contemporary standards.
  • Minimize disruption to the resident’s training (i.e. their current stage will not be impacted).
  • Flexibility and discretion can be applied by the competence committee (e.g. a competence committee may choose to not assess or modify their approach to an ill-positioned EPA).

Types of revisions

Note: Minor and editorial changes (rewording, grammar) will not be versioned.  RC will communicate these changes to the school and they will be adopted as soon as is feasible.

  • Moderate changes include the addition / removal of a milestone, replacement of a milestone within an EPA, changes to context, and change to an assessment template.
  • Fundamental changes include moving an EPA to a different stage of training or adding / deleting an EPA to / from a stage.

Review the entire POLICY: The application of new standards in CBD (versioning).

Approved December 3, 2018

Principles

In CBD, equivalency between disciplines is based on competencies (EPAs), not time; the EPAs don’t need to be identical, and setting must also be considered.  There are three models of oversight and responsibility for shared competencies (overlap): the delegated model, the conjoint model, and the discretionary model.  Identification of shared competencies and decision as to which model to use is to be a collaborative decision at the level of the specialty committee (SC).  The decisions of the SC are to be implemented locally in the programs.

As the implementation of CBD is multi-year, the Royal College is giving a lot of flexibility with the overlap until the SCs have made their decision.

Implementation

This policy will only be effective when both programs have implemented CBD and there has been discussion and decisions made by the SC.  Until then there is considerable flexibility.

Review the entire POLICY: overlap training in CBD.

Objective
To enable learner progression and information entrustment decisions, while ensuring patient safety.

Definition
A process by which information about a learner’s performance is shared with future supervisors to facilitate guidance and progress.

What type of information?
Summative and school specific.

Who does the sharing?
Program director shares with subsequent rotation supervisor, coordinator, etc. Learner privacy is key.

Learner consent
School specific. There is no RCPSC requirement on this.

Review the Royal College’s FAQ on Guidelines for Educational Handover in CBD.