How to Build an EPA Portfolio in Theator

Building an EPA portfolio means turning the cases you operate on into documented, comparable entrustability evidence over time. An EPA (Entrustable Professional Activity) portfolio ties four things you already do in Theator into one workflow: marking the part of each case you performed, requesting an EPA-tagged evaluation from your attending, using the AI Assistant with your EPA rubric to think through your entrustability, and collecting the documented cases so you can track your progress. This article walks a resident or fellow through the full journey, from a single case to a portfolio you can review over time.

Each step below links to a detailed article. Follow them in order for a new case, or jump to the step you need.

Step 1 — Claim the section you performed

Entrustability is about what you did, so start by marking your portion of the case. On the section timeline below the video, click the section you performed and assign it to yourself; repeat for any other section you led, then Apply.

This marks the sections of the case you claimed, recording your self-reported operative scope as timestamped ranges. Your claimed sections are the contextual evidence your attending — and the AI Assistant — can refer to when judging your entrustability on an intraoperative EPA.

See Claim Your Section: Label the Part of the Video You Performed for the full steps.

Step 2 — Request an EPA-tagged evaluation

Ask your attending to evaluate the section you performed, tagged with the relevant EPA.

1. From the case page, open the Evaluations panel and start a new request.
2. Choose the evaluation scope. If the Claimed sections option appears in the scope selector, select it so the evaluation covers the sections you claimed. This option is available on desktop only, and only when your organization has the claimed-sections evaluation feature enabled. If the option does not appear — for example on mobile or when the feature is not enabled — choose Select steps or Full procedure to cover the relevant portion of the case.
3. If you selected Claimed sections, a section picker appears below the scope selector. Choose All sections to include every section you claimed, or select individual sections. The Submit button stays disabled until at least one section is selected.
4. If your organization has EPA assessments enabled, open the EPA (optional) dropdown and choose the EPA. Entries are grouped as Suggested (matched to this procedure), Recent, and All EPAs, and each shows its phase — Pre-op, Intra-op, or Post-op. Pick the phase that matches the part of the case you performed (for an intraoperative EPA, choose the Intra-op entry).
5. Submit. Your attending is notified by email. If you tagged the request with an EPA, your attending responds with an EPA entrustment level for that evaluation. If you chose a standard assessment (GEARS, GOALS, or R-OSATs), they return that assessment's score or written feedback instead — only EPA-tagged evaluations contribute to the EPA entrustment trajectory.

For the complete request flow, see How to Request an Assessment. For how EPAs work across trainee requests and attending-initiated evaluations, see Theator for GME.

Step 3 — Use the AI Assistant with your EPA rubric

Between formal evaluations, you can use the AI Assistant to think through your entrustability on a case. Attach your EPA rubric — for example a GSEPA scoring PDF — and ask the assistant to help you interpret the scale against what you did.

1. In the AI Assistant message box, click Attach file and choose your rubric PDF (or drag it onto the message box).
2. Once the upload finishes, ask your question — for example, to walk the intraoperative EPA scale for this case, taking into account the sections you claimed.

The assistant reads your rubric and helps you reason through where you land on the scale. Treat this as self-review and preparation, not an official entrustability score — the entrustment level of record still comes from your attending's evaluation in Step 2.

For supported file types and size limits (the assistant reads roughly the first 50,000 characters of a document), see Uploading Files to the AI Assistant.

Step 4 — Organize cases in a portfolio collection

As each case is documented, add it to a collection that holds your EPA portfolio evidence. A collection groups the cases so you can find them together — but a new collection is private to you by default. To let your program director, department lead, or attending view it, you need to share the collection explicitly.

See How can I arrange my cases in collections? for how to create a collection, add cases to it, and share it with the right people.

Step 5 — Track your progress over time

To compare entrustment levels across cases and see how your assessments evolve, go to the Evaluations or assessments section of your profile — that is where the entrustment levels your attendings assigned across cases are recorded. Your portfolio collection is the place to find the cases grouped together for quick navigation; it is not itself an analytics surface.

Your claimed sections also feed your case and surgeon analytics so the numbers reflect only the portions you operated. See Case stats for how section markings affect those figures.

What's Next?

• Claim Your Section: Label the Part of the Video You Performed — Mark the portion of each case you performed
• How to Request an Assessment — Request an EPA-tagged evaluation from your attending
• Theator for GME — How EPA and other assessments work for trainees
• Uploading Files to the AI Assistant — Attach your EPA rubric so the assistant can read it
• How can I arrange my cases in collections? — Group your portfolio cases together