Introduction.

Entrustable professional activities (EPA) are defined as units of professional practice that validate a progressively acquired level of autonomy in accordance with the development of skills demonstrated by the students, allowing the holistic assessment of competencies to be operationalised. The objective of this article was to carry out a global review of this construct for the training in medical residencies.

Materials and methods.

A scoping review of the state of the art of EPA for postgraduate medical training programs was carried out according to the articles published in the last ten years.

Results.

330 articles were considered for the review, only 2% in Spanish and focused on Latin America. Most agree on the definition, usefulness, and key elements of EPA; however, they differ in the methodologies of their elaboration, evaluation and at the impact they generate in the training centres, trainee and trainers, whose validity is local and specific to the place where they are built and used.

Conclusions.

the number of publications on EPA is large and continues to increase. In Latin America, the concept has appeared timidly, still it is recognised as a possible response to the always complex task of certifying that the graduates of the training programs have developed the necessary competencies for correct professional performance. The greatest challenge seems to be teacher training and the large demand of time associated with the development, implementation and evaluation of EPA in postgraduate medical training programs.

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