Objective Structured Clinical Examination as an assessment method for undergraduate medical students

Background: One of the most important objectives for University of Dammam is to send competent graduated physicians into the society, which cannot be accomplished without assessments of the clinical skills of the students. The Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) was recently implemented to improve the quality, reliability, validity, university standards, and international rankings, and to decrease time consumption by the exams. Objective: To study OSCE as an assessment method for undergraduate medical students. Materials and Methods: A pilot study was conducted over one semester. A total of 92 examinees took the OSCE and written exams in three groups. The OSCE comprised 20 clinical stations, which included noting histories, physical examinations, communication skills, and data interpretation. The written exam contained 80 multiple-choice questions. Results: Cronbach a’s by group were 0.62, 0.79, and 0.85. Correlations for all stations ranged from 0.6 to 0.8, which indicated good stability and internal consistency. The reliability of the written exam was found to be 0.85. The validity of the OSCE was assessed using Pearson correlations, which was found to be 0.6. Conclusion: The OSCE is the gold standard for student assessment and is more reliable and valid than the traditional style of exam