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.
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