Assessing Clinical Skills of Nursing Students: A Triangulation Study to Explore Faculty Experiences and Feedback in Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE)

World Journal of Nursing Research | Vol 1, Issue 1

Table 3. Summary of findings from Theme four: The need for change in OSCE andsuggestions for improvement

Suggestions for improvement in management of OSCE	Suggestions for improvement in delivery of OSCE	Suggestions for improvement in infrastructure and resources of OSCE
One of the faculty felt that OSCE has to be incorporated as a formative assessment rather than integrating it into the summative assessment of the course. OSCE needs to be used as a formative assessment method instead of a summative one”. Some faculty suggested in improving the assessment criteria and reviewing the process of conducting OSCE. “I suggest in improving the assessment criteria and reviewing the process to help students in patient management....”. Faculty suggested that conducting mock drilling sessions and OSCE assessment prior to clinical practice instead of an end-of- training assessment could help the students and improves the whole process of OSCE. “Improving the scenarios to make it more realistic and providing intensive mock training sessions would better prepare the students…” “I suggest in providing a psychological preparation to help the students to better perform their skills….”. “Implementing OSCE prior to the clinical experience gives students more confidence in their real encounters with patients …”	Few of the faculty recommended in providing a relaxed environment for students and considering the time in performing skills while conducting the exam. “The time in performing the skills need to be considered…also a relaxed environment provided may help the students to collect their thoughts and perform in a more desirable way”. “The infrastructure in terms of environment, space, OSCE stations, equipments and its arrangement should be done to create a feel of real-life situation…the number of stations in the same room can be increased”. One faculty suggested that a clinical-based examination with the involvement of an external examiner would be helpful for improving the assessment process. There was a suggestion from another faculty to provide training for the examiners and to give immediate feedback for the students after the exam. “Clinical examination with a trained external examiner is the best…. OSCE can be applied if a state of art lab is provided with a lab technician… also I suggest to have a well-developed OSCE checklist which is piloted, before it is applied on a uniform basis” “Providing training for the examiners in conducting the exam will help in examiners…. providing immediate feedback to the students after the exam would improve fairness and an insight to the whole process and the reality of practice”.	Some of the faculty felt that the time factor was a major disadvantage for employing proper practice sessions for students. Many of them suggested for improving the lab hours. “The students need to have more practice time while demonstrating complex skills…. the time has to be extended for each procedure in the lab while learning…” “The lab hours need to be rearranged with enough practice, so that we could examine the students well. It also helps the students to do more self-practice sessions”. “Students can be provided with videos for repeated practice sessions which can be tailor-made as per the necessity of the student”.

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