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Use of an objective structured clinical examination in evaluating student performance
M D Prislin1, C F Fitzpatrick, D Lie
1Department of Family Medicine, University of California, Irvine, USA. mdprisli@uci.edu
Family Medicine
|May 23, 1998
Summary
The family medicine clerkship objective structured clinical exam (OSCE) provides consistent student performance measures. While reflecting essential skills, its correlation with other assessments and clerkship learning needs further exploration.
Area of Science:
- Medical Education
- Clinical Skills Assessment
Background:
- Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) are increasingly utilized for evaluating student clinical performance.
- Limited research exists on OSCEs for family medicine clerkship evaluation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess eight years of experience with a family medicine clerkship OSCE.
- To evaluate the validity and utility of the OSCE in family medicine clerkships.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of eight annual clerkship OSCEs involving 696 students.
- Comparison of OSCE performance with faculty evaluations and written exams for 335 students.
- Collection of student and faculty feedback on OSCE validity and utility.
Main Results:
- Student performance was highest in history taking and physical examination, lowest in information sharing.
- OSCE results demonstrated year-to-year consistency.
- Low correlation was observed between OSCE, faculty evaluation, and written exam results.
- Students and faculty agreed OSCE reflects essential skills but differed on its reflection of clerkship learning and actual performance.
Conclusions:
- The family medicine clerkship OSCE provides consistent performance measures with high content validity.
- Further assessment is needed to confirm construct validity.
- OSCEs offer valuable insights for defining student learning needs.
- OSCEs, faculty evaluations, and written exams yield distinct performance measures requiring further investigation.