Improving Student Experiences of the University of Arizona’s Nurse Practitioner Virtual Objective Structured Clinical Examinations

Background: Universities are providing education via online platforms, but this creates uncertainties about how to evaluate students in healthcare professions. Objective structured clinical exams (OSCEs) have been a tool to evaluate healthcare professionals for decades. The University of Arizona (UA) has implemented virtual OSCEs to evaluate nurse practitioner (NP) students. Objective: The purpose was to evaluate experiences with virtual OSCEs for NP students at UA and make changes in this process to improve student experiences. Design: One-group interview followed by a second group post-test quality improvement project. Setting: Interviews were conducted via an online Zoom meeting platform. Faculty and students also utilized Zoom for OSCE. Standardized patients participated in the UA simulation lab. Participants: Ten NP students from the 2016 FNP cohort. A second group of seven NP students from the 2017 FNP cohort. Measurements: Ten NP students were interviewed with open response questions developed by the projector director, based on the review of a previous survey. A second group of seven students completed a virtual OSCE, with changes made from interview responses, and a post survey of Likert scale questions and free responses. Results: Themes of the interview included, providing a grading rubric before the virtual OSCE, ensuring that faculty/standardized patients provided feedback, standardized faculty expectations, and emphasizing pertinent clinical skills. In the post survey, students (100%) reported that they ‘somewhat agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ with feedback received from faculty/standardized patients, expectations were managed by receiving the rubric beforehand, and that the virtual OSCE process was a “good educational experience.” Conclusion: The results suggest that after making changes to the current virtual OSCE, students had an improved experience