Background: Competency frameworks in healthcare professions are developed for a number of reasons which may include defining the profession, ensuring a competent workforce, and facilitating education, assessment, or professional mobility. Despite their popularity, there are currently no systematically developed guidelines for reporting the development of competency frameworks in healthcare professions. This is problematic because the reporting of competency framework development processes varies considerably and is often substandard. Our objective is to use explicit, systematic, and transparent methods to develop an evidence-based and agreement-based guideline for the reporting of competency framework development in healthcare professions (CONFERD-HP).
Methods: We will develop the CONFERD-HP guideline in four stages, using established methods for developing reporting guidelines in health research. First, we will establish an international and multidisciplinary expert advisory board that will oversee the conduct of the project and provide methodological support. Second, we will use the results of a previously conducted scoping review, and a review of reporting guidelines for qualitative and mixed-methods studies to develop a list of prospective checklist items for the reporting guideline. Third, we will use a modified Delphi exercise to achieve a high level of expert agreement on the list of items to be included in the CONFERD-HP reporting guideline. We will identify and recruit a group of up to 30 international experts who will provide input into the guideline in three Delphi rounds. We will then test the guideline at an in-person workshop. Fourth, we will produce and publish the CONFERD-HP reporting guideline.
Discussion: A systematically developed reporting guideline for competency framework development could help to improve the accuracy, completeness, and transparency of the development process. This, in turn, could help improve the utility and validity of reported competency frameworks.
Keywords: Competency framework, healthcare profession, Reporting, Reporting guideline
