Implementing a Multiple Station Clinical Examination: An International Collaboration

Abstract

This paper presents an experience of international collaboration that was implemented following the Sixth Ottawa Conference in Medical Education in 1994. Through collaboration between those responsible for the Quebec licensing examination for family physicians and members of the Catalan Society of Internal Medicine as well as members of the Institut d’Estudis de la Salut of Catalonia, a large scale standardized patient-based examination to assess clinical competence of internal medicine specialists in Catalonia was developed. The collaboration process included the participation to a workshop on the evaluation of clinical competence with a comprehensive OSCE examination, the observation of the Quebec licensing examination by Catalan colleagues, continuous work by the examination committee members and extensive revision of the evaluation instruments by the Quebec experts. This process of collaboration made possible the implementation of a pilot examination for internal medicine graduates in February 1996. This collaborative experience, from which major lessons can be drawn, was the basis for the development of a larger collaborative project on the evaluation of clinical competence of health professionals in Catalonia.