Context
Competency-based education (CBE) has been in existence in the landscape of educating health professionals since the 1970s. Despite this, there is significant variability in how CBE is defined in publication, practice, and conversation. This variability has likely contributed to common misconceptions about what it means for an educational system to be competency based, how such a system would operate, and the prevalence of these systems in current practices.
Objective
To define CBE through a discussion of its evolution in health professions education and discuss considerations for its role in the education of athletic trainers (ATs).
Background
The CBE framework has solidified its place in medical education to address the need for health care professionals to provide care that is safe, effective, and responsive to patient beliefs, values, and circumstances. These same necessities exist in athletic training practice. However, CBE does not yet have a solid place in the preparation of ATs, nor does it seem to be well understood by educators in the field.
Recommendations
Athletic training educators should be familiar with CBE as an educational framework that is fundamentally flexible and outcome oriented. Flexible practices allow for progression based on learner capability, opportunistic content delivery, and variable timing for assessments. Components of CBE that are outcome centric emphasize preparedness to practice and purposeful location selection for formative assessments. Further, it is important to avoid misusing the phrase CBE as a means to describe any aspect of learning that pertains to competence, competency, or competencies.
Conclusions
To hold and maintain a place in the larger context of health care, athletic training educators should have a firm grasp on the concepts and practices of CBE. Future areas of scholarship should identify strategies to incorporate CBE into athletic training education and determine its effect on patient care.
Rethinking Competence: A Nexus of Educational Models in the Context of Lifelong Learning
