by Kirsten Brown

Today is a most important day in the life of OU-COM’s third-year students. The long-awaited Objective Structured Clinical Exam (OSCE) will take place in Athens Wednesday, March 15 (and in Sagamore Hills April 5 and 6). Students are requested to be on site 15 minutes prior to their orientation. Orientation takes place at 7:45 and 9:45 in the morning and at 12:15 and 2:15 in the afternoon.

The OSCE provides feedback on performance, evaluates basic clinical skills, measures competencies and provides practice for the National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners’ (NBOME) Comprehensive Osteopathic Medical Licensure Examination Level 2-Performance Examination (COMLEX Level 2-PE), says Joanne Bray, M.B.A., coordinator of clinical competency assessment. The OSCE is Objective, because examiners use a checklist for evaluating the trainees; Structured, because every trainee sees the same problem and performs the same tasks in the same time frame; Clinical, because the tasks are representative of those faced in real clinical situation; and lastly, an Exam that evaluates the capability of the would-be osteopathic physician.

“Students will be presented with four scenarios,” Bray says. “Each scenario involves a standardized patient who portrays a medical problem.”

Students should seek assistance with common NBOME abbreviations and other helpful information on the Web, Bray says.

“What I want to stress to the students is that they should go and look at the COMLEX Orientation Guide on the NBOME Web site,” she says. “The site will familiarize students with the forms used, cases and the accepted abbreviations. They can also look at the fact sheet I have on the OSCE Web site that will provide all the information they need to get ready for the exam.”

Prior to the exam, students will receive a 30- to 45-minute orientation. The two-and-one-half to three-hour exam that follows is then divided into the four encounters, with 23 minutes at each station. Each student typically spends 14 of the 23 minutes interacting with the standardized patient and nine minutes writing a “SOAP” note. The student should offer a card with his or her name label at the close of the examination so that the standardized patient may identify the student later. When time has run out, the student must leave the room.

Once outside the room, the student has nine minutes to construct the SOAP note. The SOAP is the student’s Subjective input regarding the problem, Objective findings, Assessment and Plan for treatment.

OU-COM students must successfully complete the OSCE before they receive their D.O. degrees. By being well prepared for OU-COM's OSCE students will likely score higher on the more arduous 12-station COMLEX Level 2-PE.

“We tried to pattern the OSCE after the NBOME exam,” Bray says.

And the aim of this effort seems to be working, as the Class of 2005 scored a perfect 100 percent on the examination when first given last year.