Introducing entrustable professional activities and competency-based development into workplace-based training within laboratory animal sciences

Abstract

Animals used in science and education should be used by competent laboratory animal science (LAS) staff, both for reasons of reproducibility and to safeguard animal welfare. In this article, we propose entrustable professional activities (EPAs) as a structure to support and assess development of competence and valid entrustment decisions of persons working with laboratory animals in practice following, or in combination with, basic training. We propose the creation of a consensus framework and provide concepts that would encourage harmonisation in competence-based development. We anticipate that these will ensure that supervisors, trainers and competence assessors can more reliably establish the operator's competence in procedures on animals which are used in scientific research or education professionally.