Competency-based medical education (CBME) is a worldwide movement that focuses on the learners, allowing them to guide their own educations, working at a pace that is right for them as individuals. Competence by Design (CBD) is the Royal College’s adaptation of CBME for residency training and specialty practice in Canada. De-emphasizing the time spent in training, CBD focuses on developing the implicit, discipline-specific competencies across all CanMEDS roles. This design is hoped to improve patient care by improving learning across the continuum, from residency to retirement.

Royal College staff and the postgraduate specialty medical education community across the country have been focused on the day-to-day hard work of transitioning specialty medical education to CBD for the past few years. Even though we are so focused, we continue to learn about CBME and assess our progress.

In this issue of CBD Community Touchpoint, we discuss assessment for learning, including assessing our progress and learning.

CBD offers a new approach to teaching and assessment with regular, direct observations to confirm residents are achieving Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) in real-life situations. A new Coaching Model will support the new teacher–learner relationship in CBD. This requires a change mindset for clinicians to act more like coaches than teachers.

In this issue’s Faces of CBD, Program Director Rob Anderson and PGY1 Andrew Shanmugarajah share their experiences with those observations in the Department of Anesthesia at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine.