Adapting health care competencies to a formal competency model

Health professions education has moved away from process-based curricula to competency-based curricula. Machine readable and processable health care competencies are still embryonic, pending the emergence of appropriate standards. The IMS Reusable Definition of Competency or Educational Objective specification and the HR-XML competency standard are introduced, compared, and their problems identified in the implementation of exemplar competencies from the UK Royal College of Nursing. An improved competency model is proposed.