Experiences with conducting the objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) as a formative tool at the end of Paediatric Posting in a new Medical School in Nigeria

Abstract

Background: Medical schools use different evaluation methods after students undergo a period of instruction for certification of acquisition of requisite skills and competencies required for registration. Despite a global trend towards adoption of OSCE format to test competencies, its adoption in medical schools in Nigeria has been relatively slow and local experiences with its use are limited. We describe the development and administration of OSCE for the formative assessment of undergraduate medical students of Kaduna state university at the end of paediatrics clinical rotation.

Methodology: OSCE was developed and conducted to assess clinical skills of 20 undergraduate medical students at the end of clinical posting in paediatrics. Students rotated through a series of clinical encounters arranged in ten stations in a circuit, each for a short duration of five minutes. Clinical tasks were carefully chosen to reflect learning objectives of the posting using standardized patients while scoring was done using task-specific and validated checklists by the same assessors.

Results: A range of clinical competencies in different clinical scenarios, including history taking, physical examination and basic clinical skills was examined using this format. The conduct was resource intensive with much time spent during the selection of the competencies and appropriate standardized patients to be tested, standardization of checklists, briefing assessors and choosing appropriate venue as well as preparation of stations. Unfamiliarity with OSCE by both some students and assessors was a major challenge.

Conclusions: OSCE is a feasible way of assessing a wide range of clinical competencies of medical students during paediatric rotation in our setting.