Abstract
ABSTRACT
Introduction
Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) have been adopted in community pharmacy practice experiences, but there are no studies describing the development and validation of EPAs in contexts before their implementation. This study aimed to develop and validate the content of EPAs for community pharmacy practice experiences in Brazil.
Methods
A multi‐stage research approach based on established theoretical frameworks for EPA development was employed. Stages included: (1) team formation and preparation; (2) identification and adaptation of a validated quality assessment tool (Queen's EPA Quality—EQual) for the Brazilian context; (3) drafting EPAs by mapping Brazilian national competencies to established EPAs of the United States of America, and adapting them linguistically and contextually; (4) two rounds of expert content validation utilizing the EQual rubric in Portuguese.
Results
Seven experts participated in the first round of evaluation; six contributed to the second. Initial assessment of 11 EPAs revealed only two EPAs surpassing all domain‐specific and overall quality cut‐offs in the EQual tool. The initial list of EPAs was adjusted and sent back for a second round of evaluation. The final list comprised three required EPAs scoring above the EQual rubric's overall and domain‐specific cut‐offs.
Conclusion
This research proposed a list of EPAs for community pharmacy practice experiences to be adopted for the first time, offering a framework to standardize teaching, inform preceptor training, and reliably assess student competency development.