The Entrustable Professional Activities Project: Evaluating the Skills of MSW Students

Overview: Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs), used for a number of years in health profession education, ensure that all graduates are capable of performing a set of observable and measurable skills at matriculation. This presentation describes the second phase of a multi-year process of EPA development at one school of social work.Proposal text: In 2014, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) solicited participants for a pilot study of the implementation of a set of Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs). This is a set of teachable, observable, and measurable activities that all graduates of American medical colleges should be able to perform at matriculation. Of all medical schools that are accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), well over half applied to the pilot; of those, ten were selected. This five-year project culminated with AAMC’s adoption of 13 EPAs that are applicable to all medical school graduates at the point at which they enter any of the 40 specialty and 87 subspecialty fields of practice that are identified by the American Board of Medical Subspecialties (ABMS). This covers fields of practice as diverse as family medicine, pediatrics, geriatrics, psychiatry, and radiology. Since then, EPAs have been developed and adopted by other fields of healthcare education, including nursing and dentistry.

In 2008, CSWE adopted a competency-based education framework for accreditation. Similar to other health professions, this change moved social work education from a curriculum focused on content and structure to one focused on student learning outcomes (CSWE, 2015). This competency-based approach identifies and assesses what students demonstrate in practice. As one large, public university MSW program (both distance and campus students) has successfully implemented this competency-based approach, questions have remained from practitioners in the field regarding how we can also identify specific skills that students are able to demonstrate on day one of the concentration field placement.

In late 2019, a group of faculty members began the process of attempting to answer this request from the field by developing a set of 13 EPAs that would be applicable to all MSW graduates. The team’s goal was to identify a core set of teachable, observable, measurable, and marketable skills that all MSW alumni should be able to complete upon graduation. The EPAs needed to be applicable to graduates who were working in micro, mezzo, and macro settings, in public and private sectors, with clients from any demographic, and with any presenting conditions. The team developed social work EPAs via a faculty retreat, a survey to elicit input on each individual EPA and the process as a whole, and surveys of field agencies, potential employers, and alumni of the program.

In the fall of 2021, the team presented its preliminary work at the Council on Social Work Education’s Annual Program Meeting in Orlando. The presentation was well-received, with multiple attendees staying afterwards to ask questions about the development and implementation processes.

This presentation is a continuation of the initial preliminary work in 2021 and represents the heart of the project. This phase of the project includes the addition of another team member and the development of schematics for each of the 13 competencies, describing the direct linkages between key functions, students’ skills, students’ observed behaviors, and CSWE/NASW competencies. The presenters will also describe the next steps of the project.