Development of a communication-based virtual patient counseling objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) for first year student pharmacists

Abstract

ObjectiveThis text seeks to describe a framework for delivering and executing a virtual patient counseling OSCE and compare student performance to the in-person alternative. MethodsA communication-based virtual patient counseling objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) was created to fulfill the educational outcomes of a previously held in-person OSCE in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The virtual nature of this OSCE simulated a telehealth encounter, which has increased in utilization since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. This OSCE was offered twice in one semester – once as a formative assessment and once as a summative assessment. Student performance was mapped to learning outcomes and compared the previous year's in person performance. ResultsThe described virtual framework for executing the OSCE successfully decreased the time required and saw <1% change in overall performance from students when compared to the previous year in person which was not statistically significant. ConclusionThis framework for a virtual communication-based OSCE reduces time with a negligible impact on student performance compared to the in person alternative. InnovationThis work describes a telehealth virtual patient counseling model to replace the traditional patient counseling OSCE in pharmacy education with comparable outcomes.