Competency Over Completion: Why Competency-Based Education is Reshaping Healthcare Learning

Equipping students for the realities of clinical practice has always been a core priority in healthcare education. But the question isn’t just whether learners pass their exams. It’s whether they leave university feeling genuinely prepared for the challenges of professional care. 

Among graduates across healthcare disciplines, this feeling of preparedness is far from guaranteed. One study published in the Journal of Dental Education concluded that dental students and recent graduates considered themselves to be under prepared. Similarly, an article featured in Nurse Education in Practice notes that just 55% of new graduate nurses perceived that their undergraduate nursing education prepared them sufficiently for the practical aspects of nursing work. This is a feeling the authors attribute partially to challenges that good educational support can address (including a lack of confidence or a fear of making mistakes). 

For academic leaders and educators, this highlights a familiar but pressing challenge: ensuring that students don’t just complete their courses, but emerge ready to apply what they’ve learned in real clinical contexts. In this light, Competency-Based Education (CBE) has become an increasingly relevant framework. CBE emphasizes the importance of students demonstrating their skills, understanding, and decision-making as part of their educational progression. This competency-based learning model can (when supported with the right tools) supply students with a further layer of confidence while allowing educators and institutions to understand where knowledge gaps exist. 

In this post, we’ll explore what CBE means in the context of healthcare education, why it’s attracting renewed attention, and how institutions can start to move incrementally in that direction (without disrupting what already works). 

Intrigued? Read on. 

What Is Competency-Based Education, Really? 

Competency-Based Education (CBE) is often discussed in broad terms, but leading academic bodies now define it with increasing precision. According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN): 

‘Competency-based education refers to a system of instruction, assessment, feedback, self-reflection, and academic reporting that is based on students demonstrating that they have learned the knowledge, attitudes, motivations, self-perceptions, and skills expected of them as they progress through their education.’ 

In other words, CBE isn’t a single method or curriculum, but a guiding principle that centers demonstrated learning alongside more traditional measures of progress, such as time served or hours logged in practice (including simulation, where permitted). At its more flexible extremes, this philosophy can even facilitate what the Competency-Based Education Network calls a ‘personalized pace’. This is a form of personalized learning in healthcare that allows learners to advance, not because they’ve spent a set number of weeks in a module, but because they’ve shown they understand what’s expected of them.  

For most institutions, though, the value lies less in restructuring timetables and more in bringing capability into clearer alignment with academic indicators already in use. 

In a world where healthcare graduates are stepping less confidently into clinical practice, there’s a strong motivator for considering a CBE-based philosophy. According to a convincing and growing body of evidence, it works. 

Does Competency-Based Education Deliver Better Learning? 

While Competency-Based Education is often presented in structural terms, its real power lies in its potential to support and facilitate learning. In fact, even as institutions experiment with how best to design and deliver CBE, a set of key benefits is beginning to emerge, particularly in healthcare and professional education. 

These benefits are being realized through a variety of formats and development practices. In fact, a study published in the Journal of Competency-Based Education highlights the growing use of performance-based tasks, interactive simulations, and formative assessments to support student mastery. Notably, the study points to hybridized approaches that mix traditional courses with competency-based elements, suggesting that CBE principles can be incrementally embedded without requiring a full curricular overhaul.  

Not only are these principles highly adoptable, but reports from faculty members who have implemented them point to positive outcomes for both staff and students. In a separate study, CBE instructors described the approach as student-centered, well suited to nontraditional learners, and aligned with vocational relevance. The practice was also seen to support: 

• Faster credential completion 

• Faculty career progression 

• A stronger means of bridging the gap between coursework and workplace application 

And while rigorous, large-scale outcome studies are still emerging, early evidence is promising. A 2024 comparative study in Teaching and Learning in Nursing involving nursing and healthcare students found that those enrolled in a competency-based online statistics course showed significant improvements in knowledge scores across multiple content areas.  

Together, these findings suggest that competency-based learning models can (when supported by the right digital tools and assessment strategies) enhance learner access, accelerate progress toward clinical readiness, and prepare students for the practical challenges that lie ahead. It’s not just a structural shift. It reflects a growing effort to align learning more closely with how students will need to think and act in practice, alongside the recognition of changing learner needs and the availability of personalized learning journeys. 

DISCOVER MORE EDUCATION INNOVATIONS | ‘Embracing Digital Transformation in Healthcare Education Without Replacing Traditional Teaching’ 

How Can Technology Can Support the Shift to Competency? 

For many institutions, a full-scale competency-based model may feel out of reach from both a curricular and infrastructural perspective. After all: 

• Timetables are fixed 

• Assessment systems are entrenched 

• Faculty are already working at capacity 

Even when the pedagogical argument for CBE is compelling, the logistics can make it seem aspirational at best. But with the right tools in place and a recognition that CBE can be achieved by increments, the practice doesn’t just become possible: it becomes easy to kick off. 

That’s where learning technologies, especially digital learning platforms built for simulation and skills development, come in. By allowing students to practice key clinical tasks repeatedly, independently, and with the freedom to fail without consequences, these tools enable faster, more confident progression toward competence. The shift at play here isn’t in the curriculum, but in how learners engage with it. 

More importantly, the right platforms make competency visible. Understanding the subject areas where students are breezing through effortlessly versus those that cause cohorts to stumble is a vital step in moving toward a competency-first framework. As such, academic leaders looking to pursue CBE will benefit from learning technology that: 

• Offers performance and usage insights at the cohort and program level 

• Allows educators to refine performance data down to individual performance 

• Supplies program-facilitated notifications to prompt students to undertake activities on the platform 

With this level of insight on the table, educators can see where students are succeeding, where they’re stalling, and how they’re improving over time. This isn’t just helpful for tracking progress: it gives institutions the flexibility to act. When students demonstrate they’ve learned the appropriate knowledge (as the AACN’s definition puts it) at an earlier stage, educators regain the bandwidth to spend more time on what matters most: mentoring, coaching, and addressing real learning needs. 

KEEP READING | ‘Learning Technology and Curriculum Delivery: Help or Hindrance?’ 

Competency-Based Education: The Key Takeaway 

CBE doesn’t demand a revolution. It offers a clear, achievable path forward: one where learners demonstrate their knowledge, educators refine the value of their teaching time, and institutions build new capability without rebuilding from scratch. 

For academic leaders with their eyes set on a future-proofed program, CBE is a strategic opportunity. And the right technology makes it not only possible, but practical. 

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