How an EPA-based curriculum supports professional identity formation

BACKGROUND: Entrustable professional activities (EPAs) are widely used in medical education, and they might be an important incentive to stimulate professional identity formation (PIF) of medical students, by actively encouraging participation in the workplace. The goal of this study was to explore the effects of an EPA-based curriculum on the PIF of medical students in undergraduate curricula. METHODS: In this study at the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, the authors interviewed twenty-one medical students in three focus group interviews (November 2019), and conducted a thematic analysis based on both the synthesizing concepts PIF, communities of practice and EPAs, and newly defined themes. RESULTS: Four central themes proved crucial for understanding the influence of EPAs on PIF: creating learning opportunities, managing feedback, dealing with supervision in context and developing confidence. EPAs helped students to create learning opportunities and to choose activities purposefully, and the use of EPAs stimulated their feedback-seeking behavior. The context and way of supervision had a great impact on their development, where some contexts offer better learning opportunities than others. EPAs helped them develop trust and self-confidence, but trust from supervisors hardly appears to result from using EPAs. CONCLUSIONS: An EPA-based curriculum does stimulate PIF in the complex context of working and learning by supporting participation in the workplace and by encouraging feedback-seeking behavior. Striking the right balance between participation, feedback-seeking behavior and choosing learning activities is essential. TRIAL REGISTRATION: This study was approved by the ethics committee of the Netherlands Association of Medical Education (NVMO, case number 2019.5.12). SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-022-03116-0.