Introducing the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) in the undergraduate psychiatric curriculum:...

The Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) was introduced in undergraduate psychiatry clerkship in 2008. The authors studied the effect of OSCE on the students' performance.

The ″short case″ (SC) and ″oral examination″ (OE), two of the five components of the previous assessment format, were replaced with the OSCE. Results were compared with those of the 2007 students.

The introduction of the OSCE had little impact on the overall scores, but the 2007 students had significantly higher scores on the essay examination and long case, whereas the 2008 group had significantly higher scores on the OSCE (versus the OE for the 2007 group). In comparing the top 10 scoring students from the two classes, the 2007-year students had significantly higher overall scores, both on end-of-course tests and the annual examinations. In particular, the scores for the OSCE exams for the 2008 class were significantly lower than the scores for the OE in the 2007 class.

The higher scores on OSCE in Year 2008 suggest that students performed better on clinical skills and professional development than recall on the factual-knowledge domains. Since the changes were introduced in the year 2008, the comparison can best be regarded as qualitative, and it is probably too early to judge the impact of the OSCE. Further studies to determine validity of the OSCE are needed.