Developing a successful nursing Objective Structured Clinical Examination

The evaluation of nursing students' clinical competencies is essential to the educational process. The Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) program was designed to assess students in a variety of health topics that may not be experienced during the assigned clinical rotation. Building on prior work, the purpose of this study was to examine specific aspects of the nursing OSCE toward developing a reliable and valid tool for evaluating selected students' clinical competencies.The following areas were investigated using an assessment design: the development of case scenarios and updates, the role and training of the standardized patient, and students' perceptions of the nursing OSCE experience. Recommendations are made for the variety of case scenarios, frequency of updates, methods by which standardized patients should be trained, remediation, and program requirements. Students were overwhelmingly favorable to perceived benefits of participation in OSCEs during their nursing education.