Student evaluation of an OSCE in paediatrics at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica

BACKGROUND: The Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of the West Indies first implemented the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) in the final MB Examination in Medicine and Therapeutics during the 2000–2001 academic year. Simultaneously, the Child Health Department initiated faculty and student training, and instituted the OSCE as an assessment instrument during the Child Health (Paediatric) clerkship in year 5. The study set out to explore student acceptance of the OSCE as part of an evaluation of the Child Health clerkship. METHODS: A self-administered questionnaire was completed by successive groups of students immediately after the OSCE at the end of each clerkship rotation. Main outcome measures were student perception of examination attributes, which included the quality of instructions and organisation, the quality of performance, authenticity and transparency of the process, and usefulness of the OSCE as an assessment instrument compared to other formats. RESULTS: There was overwhelming acceptance of the OSCE in Child Health with respect to the comprehensiveness (90%), transparency (87%), fairness (70%) and authenticity of the required tasks (58–78%). However, students felt that it was a strong anxiety-producing experience. And concerns were expressed regarding the ambiguity of some questions and inadequacy of time for expected tasks. CONCLUSION: Student feedback was invaluable in influencing faculty teaching, curriculum direction and appreciation of student opinion. Further psychometric evaluation will strengthen the development of the OSCE

The need for national medical licensing examination in Saudi Arabia

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Medical education in Saudi Arabia is facing multiple challenges, including the rapid increase in the number of medical schools over a short period of time, the influx of foreign medical graduates to work in Saudi Arabia, the award of scholarships to hundreds of students to study medicine in various countries, and the absence of published national guidelines for minimal acceptable competencies of a medical graduate.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>We are arguing for the need for a Saudi national medical licensing examination that consists of two parts: Part I (Written) which tests the basic science and clinical knowledge and Part II (Objective Structured Clinical Examination) which tests the clinical skills and attitudes. We propose this examination to be mandated as a licensure requirement for practicing medicine in Saudi Arabia.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The driving and hindering forces as well as the strengths and weaknesses of implementing the licensing examination are discussed in details in this debate.</p

Web-assisted assessment of professional behaviour in problem-based learning: more feedback, yet no qualitative improvement?

Although other web-based approaches to assessment of professional behaviour have been studied, no publications studying the potential advantages of a web-based instrument versus a classic, paper-based method have been published to date. This study has two research goals: it focuses on the quantity and quality of comments provided by students and their peers (two researchers independently scoring comments as correct and incorrect in relation to five commonly used feedback rules (and resulting in an aggregated score of the five scores) on the one, and on the feasibility, acceptability and perceived usefulness of the two approaches on the other hand (using a survey). The amount of feedback was significantly higher in the web-based group than in the paper based group for all three categories (dealing with work, others and oneself). Regarding the quality of feedback, the aggregated score for each of the three categories was not significantly different between the two groups, neither for the interim, nor for the final assessment. Some, not statistically significant, but nevertheless noteworthy trends were nevertheless noted. Feedback in the web-based group was more often unrelated to observed behaviour for several categories for both the interim and final assessment. Furthermore, most comments relating to the category ‘Dealing with oneself’ consisted of descriptions of a student’s attendance, thereby neglecting other aspects of personal functioning. The survey identified significant differences between the groups for all questionnaire items regarding feasibility, acceptability and perceived usefulness in favour of the paper-based form. The use of a web-based instrument for professional behaviour assessment yielded a significantly higher number of comments compared to the traditional paper-based assessment. Unfortunately, the quality of the feedback obtained by the web-based instrument as measured by several generally accepted feedback criteria did not parallel this increase