Objective Structured Clinical Examination? How students perceive their learning after OSCE

Assessment of skills is an important part of medical education. The objective was to find out how students perceive their learning after being assessed through OSCE.

It was a mixed convergent parallel study. The study was carried out in the gynaecology department of a private medical college in Lahore. Five groups of final year students posted for rotation in gynae wards were included in this study. Each group comprised of 18 students. They were exposed to OSCE once daily. After completion of one month, students were given a feedback questionnaire (developed and validated by medical educationists) and a focus group discussion was carried out. Eight participants were selected from each group randomly and interviews were recorded. Interviews were transcribed verbatim.

Quantitative data calculated by SPSS 21 and results were calculated as frequencies. Qualitative analysis was based on word frequency count and thematic analysis was followed. Almost 65.2% of the student Shows agreement to the response that OSCE should be part of internal assessments. Whereas 15% shows disagreement and 9% remain neutral. The themes extracted after interviews were, better assessment tool, exam fear, knowledge, confidence and change learning style. thus, triangulating the data. The outcome measured was the result of the final professional of obstetrics and gynaecology year 2017-2018 batch. The success rate was 100% in gynae/obs and one student was able to get a distinction.

Students perceived OSCE as a better assessment tool that increased their knowledge and confidence level. Thus, they were an opinion that OSCE should be part of examinations held in college.