A systematic review on the effectiveness of objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) in comparison with the traditional method of practical examination

Abstract

Clinical skills and practice play the main roles in the training of professional courses like nursing. Since its inception, the OSCE has been widely and increasingly used. Studies have shown that it is an effective evaluation tool to assess practical skills for professional courses like nursing. In many occurrences, the OSCE process has been used to test trainees from different disciplines in healthcare settings. The application of OSCE has numerous benefits for both medical and nursing students. It can help to assess the knowledge and performance of clinical skills easily, which is important for nursing practices. An extensive review of Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) was conducted in comparison with the traditional method of practical examination to find out its effectiveness and identify some barriers and issues related to it. Data were collected from electronic databases including MEDLINE, Pub Med, ISI Web of Science, and CINHAL in four stages, Identification, Screening, Selection, and Inclusion. In this process, 19 studies have been selected and 52 studies have been rejected due to non-meeting of inclusion criteria. In each and every study, the scores for OSCE, along with student satisfaction scores, are high, as some of the studies identify some key issues in carrying out OSCE. The key issues are identified by the teachers who are on the check list, which should be valid, the requirement for expensive models to carry out OSCE, the requirement for more examiners and the space and care that must be taken in organising the stations.