Readiness for Residency

Abstract

Medical educators must ensure the readiness of medical school graduates to assume their new roles as physicians-in-training. Despite well-structured medical school curricula, scores of reports in the literature indicate that recent graduates are not adequately prepared to perform all of the tasks expected of them. In other words, gaps exist between the expectations of residency directors and the skills of new physicians. Several initiatives offer opportunities to bridge this gap. Entrustable professional activities (EPAs) offer standardized objectives for attainment of essential clinical skills among all students before graduation. Specialty-specific courses at the end of medical school are increasing, allowing students who have matched in a discipline to cement the unique skills needed for that specialty. Employing a mastery learning approach when assessing EPAs may help to ensure all graduates have achieved uniformly high performance of essential skills.