Entrustable professional activities (EPAs) are units of measure for a particular profession which describe the professional’s unique abilities and work. EPAs can be utilized in two ways: (1) as a link between individual competencies for mastery and overall professional responsibilities in practice and (2) as a mechanism for faculty to assess the student’s progression using levels of decreasing supervision. Currently utilized in medical education, implementation and utilization of EPAs within pharmacy education has potential benefits and challenges. This review will describe, highlight benefits of, and share mitigation strategies for implementing EPAs within pharmacy education.

Entrustable professional activities (EPAs), units of professional practice that require proficient integration of multiple competencies and can be entrusted to a sufficiently competent learner, are increasingly being used to define and inform curricula of health care professionals. The process of developing EPAs can be challenging and requires a deep yet pragmatic understanding of the concepts underlying EPA construction. Based on recent literature and the authors’ lessons learned, this article provides the following practical and more or less sequential recommendations for developing EPAs: [1] Assemble a core team; [2] Build up expertise; [3] Establish a shared understanding of the purpose of EPAs; [4] Draft preliminary EPAs; [5] Elaborate EPAs; [6] Adopt a framework of supervision; [7] Perform a structured quality check; [8] Use a Delphi approach for refinement and/or consensus; [9] Pilot test EPAs; [10] Attune EPAs to their feasibility in assessment; [11] Map EPAs to existing curriculum; [12] Build a revision plan.

While pharmacy education updates learning as new information arises, changes to learning experiences can trail behind current practices and technology. There have been multiple calls for radical changes in how health professions education is delivered in order to ensure patients are receiving high-quality care. Competency-based education (CBE) has been one way discussed in the literature for how to handle this need to develop students who have a willingness to learn and can problem solve. The goal of this review is to examine whether CBE is needed to drive the profession of pharmacy forward. To address, we collaboratively to identified stakeholder perspectives to evaluate the need. The following stakeholders achieved consensus among the committee members: patients/society, learners, workplace/profession, and academic institutions. Based on those perspectives, needs and gaps to address those needs were identified and are presented in this review.

Opioid overdoses in Chicago are unevenly distributed, affecting medically underserved neighborhoods most acutely. Innovations in reaching patients perceived to be hard-to-reach (e.g., unstably housed, marginalized), especially in these underserved neighborhoods, are urgently needed to combat the overdose crisis. This study characterizes the pilot year of a mobile medical unit partnership between a large urban academic center and a community-based harm reduction organization in Chicago. This is a retrospective cohort study of all patients who were seen on a mobile medical unit focused on providing low-threshold buprenorphine and primary care in areas with high opioid overdose rates on Chicago's West Side. Treatment episodes were accrued between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022 in the first year of operation. The main outcomes were number of patients seen, demographic characteristics of patients, and reason(s) for visit over time. The study saw 587 unique patients on the mobile medical unit between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022. Approximately 64.6 % were African American, and more than half lacked active insurance or could not confirm insurance status at the time of visit. The most common reason for initial visit was COVID-19 vaccination (42.4 %), and the most common reason for follow-up visit was buprenorphine treatment (51.0 %). Eleven patients initially presented for other health concerns and later returned to initiate buprenorphine. The mobile medical unit successfully reached nearly 600 patients in traditionally medically underserved Chicago neighborhoods with the highest overdose rates. The mobile unit's integrated approach met a variety of health needs, including buprenorphine initiation, with a unique opportunity for postoverdose initiation. Several patients initiated buprenorphine after presenting for different health concerns, showing the potential of an integrated approach to build on past mobile outreach programs and reach people with opioid use disorder who are not yet ready to initiate treatment.