CanMEDS Milestones

CanMEDS Milestones are educational statements that illustrate how a physician’s competence is expected to progress over the course of his/her career from novice to mastery.

  • Milestones are associated with the CanMEDS enabling competencies and are typically expressed across six integrated stages of competence.
  • The addition of CanMEDS Milestones is arguably the biggest change between the 2005 and the 2015 versions of the Framework.
  • The CanMEDS 2015 milestones are written to apply to any medical discipline (e.g. Obstetrics or Internal Medicine).
  • With the help of the Royal College over the next five-to-10 years, each Specialty Committee will tailor the milestones to be useful for teaching, learning and assessment in that discipline.
  • As disciplines transition to Competence by Design (CBD), they will use milestones in combination with Royal College EPAs (Entrustable Professional Activities). Together CanMEDS Milestones and Royal College EPAs will support authentic, work-based assessment that is targeted at the daily tasks of physicians.
competence diagram tiers labeling all the milestone stages

  • The move to competency based medical education (CBME) is seen as a mechanism to enhance the practice readiness of graduates so they will leave supervised training with the skills they will need for their continued learning throughout their careers.
  • It encourages a system where learners regularly demonstrate their performance in real situations and settings.
  • Through the CanMEDS 2015 Framework, and the associated milestones, educators now have useful markers of progression to use as the basis for meaningful feedback to learners.
  • Learners will use this feedback to both enhance and record their educational progress.

  • CanMEDS Milestones mark the progression of competence throughout a physician’s career.
  • They provide clearly defined targets to guide learning and assessment.
  • The milestones enable learners to focus their learning activities more effectively.
  • They enable assessors to know when a learner has achieved a given milestone or set of milestones and is ready to move to the next stage of training or development.

You can now:

  • Filter and export the CanMEDS Framework and Milestones to meet your specific needs.
  • Share the link to your customized view of the CanMEDS Framework and Milestones.
  • Export your customized view of the CanMEDS Framework and Milestones.

In this first release of our new online tool, there are 3 ways to filter your results:

  1. CanMEDS Role
  2. Stage of the Competence Continuum
  3. Hot topic

    Hot topics are commonly searched concepts. If you use this function in conjunction with the stage filters, you may find that additional stages suddenly appear on your screen. This is because your hot topic is covered at a different stage and we wanted you to see that.
Quick User Tips:
  • Filters may be used in conjunction with one another.

    For example, you are able to filter milestones associated with the Transition to Practice stage within the Communicator and Collaborator Roles.
  • It is possible to see the Key and Enabling Competencies only by deactivating the check mark in the Show Milestones option.
  • Once you have filtered your specific view, you can choose to share the link or export the results to a downloadable file.