Many students may not feel trained enough for performing practical
clinical tasks prior to their clinical clerkships or at
graduation.2 There are different views on the
competencies required for young physicians to begin their career. These
competencies include several clinical skills that young physicians
should be able to perform.24 Therefore entrustable
professional activities (EPAs) have increased in recent years. EPAs are
core units of professional medical practice that physicians were
entrusted to do on their own without supervision after supervisor
approval. Among EPAs at different institutions for graduating medical
students are venipuncture, rectal examination and several other clinical
skills. These clinical skills are believed to be done by physician on
their own or are believed that each physician has to know how to perform
them.25 Our data shows that the scores during the
second testing were not significantly higher in performing venipuncture.
We suppose the reason for no improvement in venipuncture performance is
that students did not practice the skill during the clerkship due to the
delegation of this skill to nurse practitioners. However, we detected
significant improvement in rectal examination score on the second
testing. We suppose that the reason for significant improvement in
rectal examination performance is that students have been practicing
this clinical skill during their clerkship.