Curriculum standards
The curriculum standards outline the educational objectives of the training program and the standard against which trainees’ abilities are measured.
Competencies
Common for all Advanced Training Programs
These are statements of professional behaviours, values and practices expected of a trainee as they adopt the professional identity of a physician. Competencies are organised by the domains of the Professional Practice Framework.
Entrustable Professional Activities (EPA)
Each Advanced Training Curriculum will contain a mix of common EPAs and program-specific EPAs
EPAs are essential work tasks that can be delegated, observed and assessed.
Knowledge Guides
Program-specific
Knowledge Guides will provide detailed guidance to trainees on the important topics and concepts trainees need to understand to become experts in their chosen specialty.
Program content
The Advanced Training curricula will comprise of a mix of program-specific content and content that is common across all Advanced Training programs (where possible).
The curriculum standards will be supported by learning, teaching and assessment programs.
Common standards
The common standards (PDF) were developed by the RACP Curriculum Advisory Group and Curriculum Development Unit and have undergone extensive consultation to:
- ensure the standards are at an appropriate level for the end of Advanced Training
- ensure the standards are assessable
- elicit feedback from a broad range of stakeholders to refine the standards.
There remains more work to be done to ensure the competencies for the Cultural Competence domain are appropriate. Development and consultation will continue in this area.
The case for common standards
The introduction of common content across many curricula is a key aspect of Advanced Training curricula renewal.
In the move toward competency-based training, having common standards for the Advanced Training curricula will:
- improve the utility of the work-based curricula and programs
- allow content development processes to be streamlined
- benchmark content across programs to demonstrate equivalency
- better facilitate dual training
The common standards are not an entire curriculum, they are a component. In the new RACP curriculum model, a whole curriculum will comprise of a mixture of common curricula content and content that is unique to that specialty. Some specialties will start developing their program-specific content in 2020 with assistance from the Curriculum Advisory Group and RACP Curriculum Team.
Applicability of the common standards
The common standards for Advanced Training are made up of Competencies based upon the 10 domains of the Professional Practice Framework and 13 Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs).
While Competencies will be common across all Advanced Training programs, only 2 of the proposed common EPAs will be common to all Advanced Training programs:
- EPA 1: Team leadership
- EPA 2: Supervision and teaching
Specialty groups will determine the applicability of the other proposed common EPAs to their programs and will tailor that stem content to meet the needs of their programs, and/or write their own specialty-specific EPAs as required.