Exams Evaluate Students' Clinical Skills
The Department of Medical Education and Biomedical Informatics annually administers two objectively structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) to University of Washington medical students. These clinical skills exams have been implemented as part of the School of Medicine's curricula revision. The exams encourage repeated practice and beginning mastery of key clinical skills necessary for medical students to progress in their training. These clinical examinations are dynamic, with new test elements regularly developed (and prior ones improved upon) as a concerted effort between clinicians in the School of Medicine and education experts in the Department of Medical Education and Biomedical Informatics.
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| A fourth-year medical student takes an objectively structured clinical exam. Students go station to station to evaluate volunteers who simulate patient-care scenarios with realistic props. |
Each medical student encounters two of these exams during the four years of medical school. The first OSCE, a required clinical skill performance examination, occurs at the end of the second year. The project was first piloted in the spring of 2002, and was fully implemented by the spring of 2003. Second-year students are required to take and pass each examination station before they can begin their required third-year clerkships. The second year exam evaluates students on such clinical skills as medical history taking, bedside physical examination, clinical reasoning, professionalism, and ethics.
The second required OSCE occurs at the beginning of the senior year. All students must pass these senior OSCEs to graduate and advance into their chosen residency-training program. The senior exam was piloted in the spring of 2003 and will be administered for the first time to the entire senior class in the summer of 2004.
An OSCE testing morning consists of six to eight stations, each presented as a clinical vignette requiring the student to demonstrate a measurable skill such as an abdominal examination. A given station allows eight minutes for the student to demonstrate the skill with two minutes of faculty feedback, and then two minutes for the student to move on to the next room and prepare for the next clinical skill demonstration. The faculty members evaluate the student's performance and give constructive suggestions for continued practice and professional growth.
Dr. Craig Scott, professor of medical education, and Dr. Terry Mengert, professor of medicine in the Division of Emergency Medicine and head of the medical school's Snake River College, co-direct the OSCE Assessment Program.