—Dr. Dini Hui, Director, Undergraduate Medical Education
Workplace-Based Assessments are coming to clerkship!
What is a WBA?
WBA is an assessment of a common and observable clinical skill or task performed by a learner in the work environment. The Association of Faculties of Medicine in Canada (AFMC) has defined 12 such tasks for students during their clerkship, referred to as EPAs. These EPAs are common to all specialties (e.g. completing a history and physical exam, developing a differential diagnosis) and a consistent WBA tool used throughout clerkship to capture feedback on the EPAs provides opportunity for a developmental assessment of skills acquisition.
The WBA pilot for clerkship students will run from March to August 2023. Robust evaluation will take place during the pilot period and help to inform the full implementation of the tool from September 2023 and beyond.
Is there any difference between WBAs for residents and medical students?
If you are a faculty member, you may have completed EPA forms on Elentra for your residents. Elentra will still be the platform used for WBA completion in the MD Program. There are two major differences: 1. The tool used for the MD Program looks different and consists of a 4-point rating scale with no milestone ratings for students. 2. The goal is to use WBA as a framework for a brief coaching conversation and to document that conversation. The most important component of the tool is the required narrative portion that follows the rating scale. The MD program is not using the WBA tool and outcomes on EPAs for progress decisions (there are no stages of training in the undergraduate program); it is an assessment for learning, not of learning.
Please also refer to the Faculty Development WBA webpage for further information/resources, and the EPA Newsletters that are being circulated directly by the MD Program.
