Objective Structured Clinical Examinations with simulated patients in postgraduate psychology training: Student perceptions

Abstract

Objective Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) involving simulated patients (SPs) are being incorporated into professional psychology training to teach and assess competencies. However, students' perceptions of SP use in their education are mixed. Moreover, there are limited reports of student perceptions of OSCEs in psychology beyond quantitative measures. This is the first report of extensive use of feedback in an OSCE in psychology. We report a content analysis of the reflection task completed by all students, focusing on student perceptions of aspects of the OSCEs that impacted their learning. Methods Postgraduate psychology students' (n = 18) descriptions of OSCEs were content analysed, with 11 themes reported. Results Findings support the use of multiple sources of feedback to assess student competencies and support students' learning. In particular, verbal feedback from SPs and educators in addition to the use of recording and marking technology and opportunity to engage with an academic mentor when undertaking OSCEs were highlighted as important learning strategies. Conclusions Overall, SPs were perceived as useful and valuable in preparing students for clinical fieldwork. Incorporating OSCEs into postgraduate training, both to assess competencies but also to support student learning, was perceived positively by students.

A New Reality: The Role of Simulated Learning Activities in Postgraduate Psychology Training Programs

“…A main disadvantage was feeling stressed going into the OSCE. This student stress has been reported in other research (i.e., Roberts et al, 2017;Roberts et al, 2020). Staff in Sheen et al (2015) commented that the reliability and validity of the OSCE was higher than for other assessment methods, as well as providing a safe place for students to practice their skills; however, a disadvantage was the increased time and cost required to run the OSCE (Sheen et al, 2015).…”

“…A common assessment method in health professional education is the OSCE, which involves students interacting with simulated clients to demonstrate their clinical skills (Roberts et al, 2020). These have been used for many years in medical education; however, psychology has been slower to adopt OSCEs for assessment, with some recent Australian studies conducted to explore the responses of postgraduate clinical and health psychology students to the OSCE (e.g., Sheen et al, 2015;Roberts et al, 2017;Roberts et al, 2020).…”

“…Staff in Sheen et al (2015) commented that the reliability and validity of the OSCE was higher than for other assessment methods, as well as providing a safe place for students to practice their skills; however, a disadvantage was the increased time and cost required to run the OSCE (Sheen et al, 2015). In response to the limited research on student perceptions of the OSCE, these were assessed in a postgraduate psychology course taken by clinical and health psychology masters students (Roberts et al, 2020). Based on a pilot study (Roberts et al, 2017), the researchers designed a new process for students, which included written and verbal feedback from the simulated client, a mentoring session with a registered psychologist, increased preparation, and the opportunity to reflect on the experience.…”

“…Overall, students found the OSCE very beneficial for several reasons, including receiving feedback from the client, developing skills and being able to observe and reflect on their own clinical practice. Some students felt that they did not have enough practice and formative feedback prior to summative OSCE assessment, and some did not like the implemented method of receiving feedback immediately after the OSCE (Roberts et al, 2020).…”

Development and preliminary testing of a virtual reality measurement for assessing intake assessment skills

“…The use of OSCEs for teaching and assessment has gone from being a questionable idea to being well‐accepted by faculty members and students for high‐fidelity simulation of clinical scenarios (Hodges et al, 2014). In the past 10 years, OSCEs have been gradually adopted in professional psychology as suitable competency‐based assessments to measure student competencies in motivational interviewing (Roberts et al, 2020); psychological assessment (Lan et al, 2015; Sheen et al, 2015; Yap et al, 2012); and psychological intervention (Yap et al, 2012). OSCEs have also been integrated into psychology curricula to promote competency‐based training to enhance student learning (Roberts et al, 2020).…”