Assessing the utility of virtual OSCE sessions as an educational tool: a national pilot study

Abstract

Background Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) are a common form of assessment used across medical schools in the UK to assess clinical competence and practical skills and are traditionally held in an in-person format. In the past, medical students have often prepared for such exams through in-person peer-assisted learning (PAL), however, due to the recent Covid-19 pandemic, many in-person teaching sessions transitioned to online-based formats. There is currently a paucity of research on the utility of virtual PAL OSCE sessions and thus, we carried out a national pilot study to determine the feasibility of virtual OSCE teaching via feedback from participants and examiners. Methods A total of 85 students from 19 UK-based medical schools with eight students based internationally attended the series of online OSCE workshops delivered via Zoom®. All students and examiners completed a feedback questionnaire at the end of each session regarding parameters, which included questions on pre-and post-workshop confidence in three OSCE domains: history-taking, communication and data interpretation. A Likert scale using 5 Likert items was used to self-report confidence, and the results were analysed using the Mann-Whitney U test after assessing for normality using the Shapiro-Wilk test. Results Results from student feedback showed an increase in confidence for all three OSCE domains after each event (p < 0.001) with 69.4% agreeing or strongly agreeing that online OSCE sessions could sufficiently prepare them for in-person exams. Questionnaire feedback revealed that 97.6% of students and 86.7% of examiners agreed that virtual OSCE teaching would be useful for preparing for in-person OSCE examinations after the pandemic. Conclusion Most participants in the virtual OSCE sessions reported an improvement in their confidence in history-taking, communication and data interpretation skills. Of the participants and examiners that had also experienced in-person OSCE examinations, the majority also reported that they found virtual OSCE sessions to be as engaging and as interactive as in-person teaching. This study has demonstrated that virtual OSCE workshops are a feasible option with the potential to be beneficial beyond the pandemic. However, more studies are required to assess the overall impact on student learning and to determine the value of virtual OSCE workshops on exam performance.

Are we ready yet for digital transformation? Virtual versus On-Campus Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) as an assessment tools in pharmacy education. A randomized controlled head-to-head comparative assessment

“…Online teaching was a kind of shift that many pharmacy and medical schools targeted worldwide, especially after the COVID- (Grover et al, 2022) assessed the utility of virtual OSCE sessions as an educational tool in a national pilot study conducted among several universities in the UK. They concluded that V-OSCE workshops could act as a valuable learning resource that has the potential to be used even beyond the pandemic.…”

“…We have developed a post OSCE survey for both students and the examiners depicted in [Supplementary document -5,6]. The survey used in our study was modi ed from the study published by (Grover et al, 2022).…”

“…Moreover, few studies discussed the advantages of V-OSCE over the on-campus format that include but are not limited to: reduction in travelling time, undertaking the exam in a comfortable environment, and the potential of scaling-up with smoother logistics (Grover et al, 2022, Dost et al, 2020, Blythe et al, 2021).Other studies either described how they implemented a V-OSCE assessment (Zulki y et al, 2022) , or measured students' perception and/ or performance on V-OSCE assessment(Grover et al, 2022, Lim et al, 2020, Mak et al, 2022. For example,…”

“…al., 2022,Grover et al, 2022). In the current study, the same examiners evaluated students in the two OSCE formats that could minimize in uences and differences arising as a result of examiner experience and clinical seniority(Chong et al, 2018, Stroud et al, 2011, Schleicher et al, 2017).…”

Implementation of Objective Structured Clinical Examination on Diagnostic Musculoskeletal Ultrasonography Training in Undergraduate Traditional Korean Medicine Education: An Action Research

“…Meanwhile, many practical studies have been applied in education to investigate the unmet needs of students and to apply them to improve the educational field. Action research that measures and monitors the effectiveness of the educational curriculum development and application and revises education plans is a necessary process for improving educational efficiency and student satisfaction in the newly introduced education field [ 18 , 19 , 20 ].…”