Although health professions worldwide are shifting to competency-based education, no common taxonomy for domains of competence and specific competencies currently exists. In this article, the authors describe their work to (1) identify domains of competence that could accommodate any health care profession and (2) extract a common set of competencies for physicians from existing health professions' competency frameworks that would be robust enough to provide a single, relevant infrastructure for curricular resources in the Association of American Medical Colleges' (AAMC's) MedEdPORTAL and Curriculum Inventory and Reports (CIR) sites. The authors used the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)/American Board of Medical Specialties six domains of competence and 36 competencies delineated by the ACGME as their foundational reference list. They added two domains described by other groups after the original six domains were introduced: Interprofessional Collaboration (4 competencies) and Personal and Professional Development (8 competencies). They compared the expanded reference list (48 competencies within eight domains) with 153 competency lists from across the medical education continuum, physician specialties and subspecialties, countries, and health care professions. Comparison analysis led them to add 13 "new" competencies and to conflate 6 competencies into 3 to eliminate redundancy. The AAMC will use the resulting "Reference List of General Physician Competencies" (58 competencies in eight domains) to categorize resources for MedEdPORTAL and CIR. The authors hope that researchers and educators within medicine and other health professions will consider using this reference list when applicable to move toward a common taxonomy of competencies.

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Variation among existing studies in labeling, defining, identifying, and subtyping cases of suspected drug-facilitated sexual assault (DFSA) poses challenges to integrating research findings for public health purposes. This descriptive study addressed methodological issues of nomenclature and DFSA operational definitions to improve case identification and was designed to distinguish assault subtypes. We studied a 2-year ethnically diverse cohort of 390 patients who presented acutely to an urban rape treatment center (RTC). We abstracted data from RTC medical and mental health records via chart review. Assault incidence rates; engagement into medical, forensic, and mental health services; injury sustained; and weapon use were calculated separately for assault subtypes and compared. DFSA accounted for over half of the total sexual assault (SA) cases. Involuntary DFSA (in which an incapacitating substance was administered to victims without their knowledge or against their will) increased from 25% to 33% of cases over the 2-year period. DFSA victims presented sooner, and more often attended medical follow-up and psychotherapy than non-DFSA victims. Incidence rates indicated increasing risk for young males. These findings indicate that DFSA continues to be a growing and complex phenomenon and suggest that DFSA victims have greater service needs. The field would benefit from innovations to address symptomatology arising from this novel type of trauma and the unique risks and needs of male victims, as well as underscoring the ongoing need for DFSA-specific prevention efforts for both victims and perpetrators.

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