Journal Article
Education in surgery: competency-based training
Margery H. Davis & Gominda G. Ponnamperuma
November 2007
The Bulletin of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, Volume 89, Issue 10, Pages 342 – 345
Competence-based training flourished in the 1980s in several spheres of education. The approach, however, was seen as focusing on units of competence that were too narrow and technically oriented for postgraduate training in the health professions. ‘Competence-based approaches,’ suggests Norris, ‘tend to reduce job competence to atomised, observable behaviours, which may not embody competence in the sense of generalisable or holistic capability.’ Saunders argued that ‘competence-based systems embody a reductionist concept of work practice’ and that ‘the danger of reductionism may be more acute at the higher levels of qualification and their associated training.’