Evolving to Objective Structured Clinical Exams (OSCE): Transitional experience in an undergraduate pharmacy program in Kuwait

Abstract

Background Objective Structured Clinical Exams (OSCEs) can assess professional competencies in a structured manner and facilitate objective evaluation of clinical performance. With limited data from the Eastern Mediterranean region, this study aims to describe the development, implementation, and evaluation of OSCEs for final year pharmacy students in Kuwait. The study also aims to compare students' performance in two academic years (2015–2016 and 2016–2017). Methods The design, implementation, and evaluation of the competency-based OSCE followed a 3-phase systematic evidence-based approach. The development phase involved establishing an OSCE working group to develop a blueprint and scoring rubrics and to organise assessors and standardised patient/physician training. The implementation phase involved conducting formative and summative OSCEs. The evaluation phase involved undertaking student and staff perception surveys. Results The overall students' OSCE scores for the academic years 2015–2016 and 2016–2017 were (median (interquartile range)) (71.6%, 32.2) and (60.0% (30.7)) and respectively (p < 0.0001). The average students' performance score was high in stations covering 'patient consultation and diagnosis' competency (71.4% (95% CI: 66.7–73.3)) and lower in stations covering 'monitoring of medicine therapy' competency (50.0% (95% CI: 33.3–66.7)). Students perceived stations covering 'monitoring medicines therapy' and 'assessment of medicine' as difficult. However, staff perceived stations related to 'patient consultation and diagnosis' competency as the easiest. Students reported that the OSCE was a positive experience as it provided them an opportunity to practice real life scenarios in a safe learning environment. Conclusion The OSCE helped to identify the level of competency of students prior to graduation and areas to improve in the curriculum.

Perception of Postgraduate Family Medicine Trainees About the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (Osce) Assessment Method

“…They agreed on OSCE being part of any evaluation programme in clinical medicine. Similar opinions were expressed by Pharmacy students and undergraduate students 18,[19][20][21] As compared to undergraduate students who took OSCE in Family Medicine and had no experience of OSCE before, gave positive response to majority of the aspects of OSCE 17 . In contrast to undergraduate students in Family Medicine, participants differed on the opinion that OSCE is better with simulated patient, fair and reliable.…”

“…Participants of both groups reported OSCE as a positive experience that provide an opportunity to practice real life scenarios 21 . The differences in opinion between two groups regarding fairness, validity and stress related to OSCE, is probably explained by inadequacy of one experience to form opinion.…”

Comprehensive assessment of reliability and validity for the clinical cases in simulated community pharmacy

“…Planning the sample size is a challenging criterion in validating clinical cases for OSCE due to the difference of opinion in sample size determination by the previous researchers (Abdi et al, 2019;Majumder et al, 2019;Lim et al, 2020;Almaghaslah et al, 2021;Al-Haqan et al, 2021;Peeters et al, 2021). In this regard, the study once again emphasizes that the sample size should be more than 15 for each item to ensure the fitness of the clinical cases for the OSCE simulation.…”

“…In vision 2030, Saudi Arabia has a clear plan to implement GPP in all undergraduate pharmacy curriculum (Almaghaslah et al, 2021). Objective structured clinical examinations (OSCE) were established already in various pharmacy schools across the world (Peeters et al, 2021) for assessing the professional competence of clinical pharmacists in a structured manner (Al-Haqan et al, 2021) and for undergraduate pharmacy students (Abdi et al, 2019;Lim et al, 2020).…”

Online OSCE in pharmacy education: Strategies to preserve academic integrity of high-stakes assessment

“…In many pharmacy undergraduate programmes, OSCEs are traditionally used as summative assessments to evaluate final-year students' preparedness for practice (Corbo et al, 2006;Al-Haqan et al, 2021). Nevertheless, many institutions find it useful to incorporate OSCEs at earlier stages of the course, as early as the first year of the programme (Mak et al, 2020;Al-Haqan et al, 2021;Savage et al, 2021).…”