Entrustable Professional Activities in Palliative Medicine: A Faculty and Learner Development Activity.

Faculty development (FD) is critical to the implementation of competency-based medical education (CBME) and yet evidence to guide the design of FD activities is limited. Our aim with this study was to describe and evaluate an FD activity as part of CBME implementation. Palliative medicine faculty were introduced to entrustable professional activities (EPAs) and gained experience estimating a learner's level of readiness for entrustment by directly observing a simulated encounter.

When words are your scalpel, what and how information is exchanged may be differently salient to assessors.

Purpose: Variable assessments of learner performances can occur when different assessors determine different elements to be differently important or salient. How assessors determine the importance of performance elements has historically been thought to occur idiosyncratically and thus be amenable to assessor training interventions. More recently, a main source of variation found among assessors was two underlying factors that were differently emphasised: medical expertise and interpersonal skills.

"It's More Difficult…": Clinicians' Experience Providing Palliative Care to Adolescents and Young Adults Diagnosed With Advanced Cancer.

Purpose: Adolescents and young adults (AYAs; age 15-39 years) with advanced cancer are a population in whom quality of life is uniquely affected because of their stage of life. However, training focused on palliative care for AYAs is not routinely provided for health care providers (HCPs) in oncology. This study aims to explore the experiences of HCPs involved in introducing and providing palliative care caring for AYAs with advanced cancer and their families to understand the unique challenges HCPs experience.

An entrustable professional activity descriptor for medical aid in dying: a mixed-methods study.

Background: In jurisdictions where medical aid in dying (MAiD) is legal, there is an obligation to ensure the competence of those who assess eligibility and provide MAiD to patients. Entrustable professional activities (EPAs) are one framework for incorporating competency-based training and assessment into the workplace, so we convened a group of experienced MAiD providers to develop an EPA descriptor for MAiD.

Methods: We performed a mixed-methods sequential qualitative (focus group via 2 teleconferences) and quantitative (survey) study to generate and refine a consensus descriptor using open coding followed by a modified Delphi approach.

Multilocular Cystic Renal Cell Carcinoma: Pathological T Staging Makes No Difference to Favorable Outcomes and Should be Reclassified.

Purpose: We evaluated survival outcomes of cystic/multilocular cystic renal cell carcinomas in a long-term population based study based on size and pathological tumor stage.

Materials And Methods: We retrospectively reviewed a provincial cancer registry of all histologically proven cases of multilocular cystic renal cancers treated surgically between 1995 and 2008. All cases of cystic necrosis were excluded from study.

Most renal oncocytomas appear to grow: observations of tumor kinetics with active surveillance.

Purpose: We examined the growth of tissue proven renal oncocytoma on serial imaging to improve our understanding of its natural history.

Materials And Methods: We reviewed the charts of 69 patients with oncocytoma diagnosed by biopsy or surgery between 2004 and 2010. A total of 29 cases were managed by active surveillance for at least 12 months and had 3 or more imaging events.