“Competency-based education (CBE) seeks to produce professionals whose skills are responsive to the needs of the populations and communities they serve and meet the needs of the healthcare systems and communities in which they practice.”
“If you feel compelled but ill prepared to transform your healthcare professional program to competency-based education (CBE), I would be happy to work as a consultant with your team. With the extensive experience that I have developed over 2 decades (and 3 programs), I can save valuable time and resources by expertly guiding you and your development team and streamlining their efforts, using a tried and tested 10-step framework. I called the framework “intentional competency-based learning” ©, as it is an intentional endeavour, starting from the graduate’s expected competencies to better serve the patients. I will be available starting in September 2024 to work closely with you or your team. Please contact me to plan ahead!”
Intentional Competency-Based Learning ©
The approach proposed to assist your college in developing a competency-based curriculum consists of a local team of 5 to 6 individuals (including one external professional), working closely with Prof. Moreau. Two-hour meetings will be planned every two weeks to go through all the steps of analysis, curriculum development and implementation. Prof. Moreau will provide the literature and tools to study in between meetings to help the team make quick progress and take the best decisions during the meetings. Prof. Moreau will meet with the team remotely, with one or two face-to-face meetings a year, if possible. A shorter weekly meeting between the project leader and Prof. Moreau is also planned to keep the project on track and prepare the team meetings. This approach has been shown to be extremely efficient and Prof. Moreau’s continuous engagement will ensure a productive and sustained effort throughout.
The time required to develop and implement the curriculum is dependent on the situation of the school, the buy-in of the faculty and the availability of tools and expertise. If the project is moving without barriers, a new curriculum will be ready within one year and implemented within 2-3 years with proper staff training.
The project leader and the team will go through the 10 steps that will provide a thorough analysis of the current situation (analysis phase), the development of a competency-based curriculum (development phase) and the implementation of the program (mobilisation phase) [1-3]. Change management will be applied throughout the process to engage other members of the college regularly in the project and its outcomes [1, 4]. In addition, tools and processes for continuing monitoring and improvement of the curriculum will also be constructed (evaluation phase) [5]. Altogether, this ADME (analysis, development, mobilization and evaluation) process will ensure a relevant program and a successful implementation (see roadmap below).
References
Moreau P, Al-Taweel D, Qaddoumi M & Alowayesh M. Becoming a pharmacist: Education and training. A stepwise approach to competency-based pharmacy education. in Encyclopedia of Pharmacy Practice and Clinical Pharmacy (ed. Babar ZUB) 1–14. Elsevier, 2019. doi
Moreau P. et al. Development and refinement of a matrix competency framework, with associated entrustable professional activities, to support initial pharmacy education in Kuwait. Pharmacy 2023: 11, 149. doi
Lemay J & Moreau P. Managing a Curriculum Innovation Process. Pharmacy 2020: 8, 153. doi
Al-Taweel D, Moreau P et al. Empowering competence: A program-wide active learning framework for a pharmacy program. Am J Pharma Educ 2024: 88; 101272. doi
Mukhalalati BA, Al-Ghananeem AM, Kahaleh AA, Moreau P. Chapter 5 Evaluation of CBE implementation. In FIP. Competency-based education in pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences : A handbook to support implemnentation of competency-based education and training.The Hague, 2022. (access)
Our framework is aligned with the standards proposed in the “Quality framework for competency-based education programs” by CBEN (Competency-based Education Network). It also respects the core components framework for evaluating implementation of competency-baed medical education programs (Van Melle et al. 2019. Academic Medicine; 94 (7): 1002-9)