Could entrustable professional activities support assessment in optometric clinical education in Australia and New Zealand?

Entrustable professional activities (EPAs) are increasingly being adopted as an assessment tool by medicine and other health professions in a bid to enhance competency-based health professional education. EPAs are well-defined professional activities that can be entrusted to students to perform with varying levels of supervision. They were introduced to overcome some of the limitations of traditional assessment methods of competency such as individual skills assessment or Direct Observation of Procedures and Objective Structured Clinical Examinations. Could EPAs be beneficial in Australian and New Zealand optometric clinical education for advanced skills training and accreditation including the credentialing assessment of overseas educated practitioners? This paper discusses the historical context of how competencies were introduced and assessed in Australian optometry, the evolution of the concept of EPAs in medicine and other health professions, their design and implementation worldwide and whether EPAs could be adopted into optometric training and assessment in Australia and New Zealand.

可委派专业活动（Entrustable Professional Activities, EPAs）正日益被医学及其他健康职业领域采纳为评估工具，旨在推进基于胜任力的健康职业教育发展。可委派专业活动为界定清晰的专业活动，可委派学生在不同层级的督导下独立完成。该概念的引入旨在克服传统胜任力评估方法的若干局限，例如单项技能评估、程序直接观察法（Direct Observation of Procedures）以及客观结构化临床考试（Objective Structured Clinical Examinations, OSCEs）。那么，可委派专业活动能否应用于澳大利亚与新西兰的验光临床教育，助力高级技能培训与资质认证（包括对海外受训从业者的资质评估）？本文将探讨以下内容：胜任力在澳大利亚验光学领域的引入与评估的历史背景、可委派专业活动概念在医学及其他健康职业领域的发展演进、其在全球范围内的设计与实施现状，以及可委派专业活动能否被采纳应用于澳大利亚与新西兰的验光培训与评估体系中。