Near-Peer Training: Impact of a Single Session on Students' OSCE Performance

Near-Peer Training (NPT) is increasingly used to teach clinical and procedural skills during undergraduate medical education. The impact of NPT programs on clinical practice is usually measured through OSCE stations that assess the trained skills. Little is known about the impact of a single NPT session on students' performance in OSCEs. This study aims to assess the impact of a single clinical skill NPT session on students' overall objective performance at a summative OSCE.

This prospective study evaluated the impact of a two-hour NPT session focused on three system-related clinical situations on overall clinical performance. Third-year medical students (junior) practiced these specific clinical skills under the supervision of fourth-sixth year student tutors with students rotating roles as clinician, observer, or patient. Scores (0-100) at the 3^rd year summative OSCE served as indicators of objective performance.

In 2022 and 2023, 210 out of 325 junior students underwent the NPT, with 50 tutors recruited for instruction. NPT participants significantly outperformed non-participants in the summative OSCE, with higher mean scores in global assessment (80.01± 7.64 vs 74.58± 6.71, p<0.0001), communication (83.39± 8.99 vs 79.70±10.10, p=0.0011), medical history taking (77.31± 8.93 vs 73.28±9.59, p=0.0006), and physical examination (73.52±10.66 vs 68.30±10.37, p<0.0001). However, there was no evidence of specific performance improvement in OSCE stations related to the trained system related clinical situations (effect of -0.0119±0.0598 on the normalized scores; p=0.8428).

A single NPT session improved junior students' general performance but not scores related to the trained clinical situations at a summative OSCE. More research is warranted to understand what really boosts student learning since NPT seems to be effective, independently of the clinical skills specifically trained.