Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) on Antenatal Assessment among Nursing students

Abstract

Background: The assessment of knowledge and skills plays an important part in student nurse’s progression because they need to demonstrate competency and confidence in the performance of clinical skills. OSCE has been recognized as the most reliable method for evaluation of clinical skills among Nursing students. The study aims to assess the effectiveness of OSCE on antenatal assessment among nursing students. Methods: An experimental approach with post-test only design was used to select 60 IV Year BSc Nursing students. They were selected by using a simple random sampling method. 30 were in the experimental group received planned teaching program on antenatal assessment and evaluated by OSCE, 30 were in the control group received traditional method of teaching on antenatal assessment and evaluated by traditional clinical evaluation (TCE). An observational checklist and the opinionnaire on the usefulness of OSCE were used to collect the data. Results: Average marks scored by the students who are evaluated by OSCE (21.96±1.44) were higher as compared to traditional clinical evaluation scoring (14.93±2.75) which was statistically significant (p< 0.001) Most of the students gave positive feedback on OSCE. Conclusion: Learning in the nursing clinical area gives present reality to nursing students to build up the information, abilities, dispositions, and skills. OSCE is an important, reasonable, helpful and acceptable method for assessing student’s clinical performance due to different positive particulars. The study concluded that OSCE was an effective method to evaluate the clinical skills of nursing students on antenatal examination.