Experience of implementation of objective structured oral examination for ethical competence assessment

We developed an objective structured oral examination (OSOE) case to assess the medical ethics of students. The aim of this study was to assess the reliability of OSOE with generalizability theory.

One 10-minute OSOE that contained key questions was developed. The evaluation sheet consisted of 4 domains: moral sensitivity, moral reasoning, decision making, and attitude. The total number of items was 13. The numbers of checklist items and global rating items were 11 and 2, respectively. Items and key questions were validated by 6 professionals. Standardization of the raters and the pilot study was performed before the OSOE. Fifty-four third-year medical students participated in the OSOE. The OSOE was duplicated, and 2 professors assessed 1 student independently. Each station lasted 8 minutes and was followed by a 2-minute interval,during which raters completed the checklist forms. We analyzed the reliability of the OSOE with the GENOVA program.

The reliability (generalizability coefficient) was 0.945, and the interrater agreement was 0.867. The type of item, checklist or global rating, was the largest variance component. The reliability of the checklist alone was 0.668 and that of the global rating alone was 0.363.

The OSOE is reliable and can be used to assess ethics. More research should focus on achieving validity.