Perception of Students, Staff and Simulated Patients towards Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE).

Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) has been widely used to assess the clinical performance of medical and health profession students. The literature has revealed that OSCE is an effective evaluation tool for evaluating the clinical skills of medical students. The objectives of this study were to investigate perception of the students and staff of OSCE as a clinical assessment tool during their clinical years at the Faculty of Medicine, Suez Canal University (FOM-SCU) as well as the perception of both the staff and medical interns regarding their ethical concerns of using medical interns as simulated patients in OSCE stations. Two different questionnaires were used to explore the perception of the students and staff of OSCE; also, semi-structured interviews with the staff and medical interns as simulated patients inside active stations were conducted. The results revealed that 88% of the students agreed that OSCE should remain as a form of performance assessment, and 83% of them agreed that OSCE was a valuable practical exam and provided them a great learning experience. Approximately 80.4% of the staff emphasised that faculty members need specific training to achieve more valid and reliable results when using OSCE as an assessment tool, and 76.5% of them agreed that using OSCE reduced the bias in clinical assessment. Some medical interns agreed to act as simulated patients inside the dynamic stations instead of using real patients. The study population point of view concluded that OSCE is the most valid and reliable tool for assessing the clinical performance of students; however, it requires comprehensive planning and training with collaborative work from all the stakeholders involved in its organisation and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]