Developing and examining an Objective Structured Clinical Examination

Objective Structured Clinical Examinations are commonly used within pre-registration and post-qualification nurse education to test clinical competence. Station development and refinement of the pass mark is essential to the examination process. In this paper the process of blue-printing and standardisation are described as one method of agreeing examination content and subsequent pass mark. Issues of validity and reliability are discussed in relation to these and to the process of examining. The development of good practice guidelines to ensure consistency between different markers of the same station and of a single marker examining different students on one station is described. Recommendations in relation to transparency are made to optimise student understanding of what they are being tested on and hence their performance in the examination.