Evaluating clinical skills of undergraduate pharmacy students using objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs)

Introduction: The objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) has been used for the competency assessment of clinical skills within the 4th year MPharm programme at the University of Brighton since 1999. Aim: To evaluate the clinical performance of 4th year MPharm students, through two academic years. Methods: Final year pharmacy undergraduate students were divided into 16 groups and completed an OSCE exam following a 1 week placement in a hospital. Each OSCE exam comprised of six workstations. Results: Significant differences were found between the students’ performances at the individual OSCE stations (Chi-square 1⁄4 40.7; df 1⁄4 5; p , 0.01). Students performed best on patient counselling stations and least on calculation and problem identification and resolution type stations. Conclusion: This study demonstrates that final year pharmacy undergraduates perform poorly in activities which demand an element of clinical problem identification and resolution or when performing a clinical calculation. These results suggest that a lack of clinical exposure may be, in part, responsible for the students’ perceived inability to deal with “real life” situations which involve clinical problem solving.