Facilitating flexibility in postgraduate nursing education through entrustable professional activities to address nursing shortages and career prospects

Abstract

Aim: To communicate how the Dutch postgraduate nursing education landscape was redesigned using entrustable professional activities (EPAs). The goal of this initiative was to reduce training time, enhance transfer across nursing specialities and contribute to a better-aligned continuum of initial education, postgraduate education and continuing professional development. Background: Nursing shortages continue to worsen worldwide. An approach to address this growing shortage is to create a more flexible postgraduate training structure, offering training in the just-in-time and just-as-needed models. EPAs can be used as building blocks for training and assessment. Experience with EPAs (i.e. units of professional practice that can be entrusted once a trainee has demonstrated the required competencies) in health professions education, including nursing, is rising rapidly. While EPAs are largely used to create training flexibility within a programme, they can also be used to create flexibility across programmes. In 2018–2022, training hospitals and education institutions in the Netherlands collaborated in the CZO Flex Level Project to redesign the postgraduate nursing education landscape using EPAs. Discussion: The implementation of a flexible postgraduate nursing education model nationwide will face several challenges. An overview of these challenges and suggestions for future research on the effects of the new structure on nursing competence, satisfaction and career development are provided. Conclusion: EPAs can imbue flexibility within and across training programmes. Designing an EPA-based educational landscape requires nationally coordinated efforts. Implications for nursing policy: Redesigning educational structures to allow for more flexibility is critical to address major societal challenges in healthcare.