Maternal Child Nursing Students' Experience of the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) at KSAU-CONA

Background: An important part of the clinical teaching is the assessment of the students’ competency level in all aspects of clinical performance in which students need to integrate knowledge, clinical skills, and effective communication within the patient situation. The Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) is an approach to student assessment in which aspects of clinical competence are evaluated objectively in a comprehensive, consistent and structured way.   The Maternal Child Nursing department has implemented OSCE as an assessment method for the Nursing Care of Children and Nursing Care of the Childbearing Families’ courses. The current study is designed to evaluate student overall perception of the final clinical OSCE, determine student acceptability of the process and provide feedback for the department to enhance further development of the students’ assessment.

Methods:  A descriptive cross-sectional survey was conducted at the end of the clinical placement and on the day of OSCE final exam for students at the Maternal and Child Nursing Courses during the last and current academic year.  Students were asked to give their feedback regarding their experience in taking the OSCE on a structured questionnaire that included evaluation of the exam content, structure of the stations, and organization of the OSCE, quality and objectivity of the exam process, and their opinion about using different exam format (MCQ, Essay, Case Studies).  Additionally, students asked to relate to positive and negative aspect of the OSCE as a method of clinical evaluation and their suggestion for improvement.

Results:  preliminary results showed that although, most of the students perceived that the OSCE exam was stressful experience and frightening, they reported that is contributed to their motivation for future learning. Students related to positive and negative aspect of OSCE and suggestion for improvement. Among the positive aspect of the OSCE, students mention that the OSCE is grad Experience prepare them for future work, fair and well prepared. On the other hand, most of the students commented that OSCE was stressful experience for them because of the time pressure. Students suggested that they would need more preparation and time for practice in the simulator lab before exam, allocating more time to the stations.

Conclusion: the study findings concluded that, OSCE should be practiced during the semester to decrease students stress. Both OSCE and traditional methods should be used for student’s evaluation in the clinical area. There is a need for research in this area, as well as the need to develop guidelines that may be a way of enhancing and standardizing future OSCE examination. This will make meaningful contribution to the professional nursing education.