Guidelines for the administration of oral examinations

Practical oral examinations are considered an important and often a difficult part of medical school examinations. They represent an accurate and direct mean of assessing student's interaction with patients and their clinical and technical skills. This paper reviews an outline for the administration of oral examinations. The review is based on the medical literature detailed discussions with many senior examiners from different medical systems, and the author's personal experience. In summary, although examiner's judgment is crucial, some general rules remain important for fair and consistent evaluation of students. First, examiner's attitudes should be as friendly as possible with an objective aimed to assess student's medical competence and practical safety. Secondly, scoring should be based on a model answer or well-accepted medical practices for consistent rating. Finally, each examiner should give an independent score before discussing the final rating with the other examiners.