Objective Structured Clinical Examinations, better known as OSCEs (AWES-keys), have become an integral part of the assessment of both students ' clinical skills and institutional curricular effectiveness over the past decades. OSCEs generally involve students’ rotation through a variety of skill-based stations, and can more effectively assess such skills than paper-based or multiple-choice exams.
Skills examined can be quite concrete, such as simple surgical knot tying, abdominal examination and cranial-nerve testing, or can be more amorphous, such as clinician – patient communication, clinical reasoning or ethical reflection. While many OSCE stations involve the use of Standardized Patients, other stations may involve medical simulators, lab interpretation, computer-based simulations and trigger-video evaluations.
Clinical Skills and Assessments produces a number of large and small-scale OSCEs each year. Please contact us to learn more about how we can help you develop robust, skills-based assessments for your own courses or research projects.
History and Resources
- Simulated and standardized patients in OSCEs: achievements and challenges 1992-2003
Taylor & Francis online article: UW SP Program mentioned in article for contribution to field. - Can standardized patients replace physicians as OSCE examiners?
Biomed Central online article - Clinical Teaching and OSCE in Pediatrics
Medical Education Online article - Using Standardized Patients to Teach Clinical Ethics
Medical Education Online article
