Objective structured clinical examination in the perception of medical students

Abstract

The OSCE is a methodology for evaluating clinical competences based on the direct observation of the performance and interaction of the doctor/student/patient, over a set of seasons. Every student-based teaching process needs to reflect student satisfaction on the assessment format. Thus, the study aimed to evaluate the students' perception of the OSCE tool. This is a quantitative and qualitative, descriptive and exploratory research with data collected through a semi-structured questionnaire. The sample consisted of 40 students of the 9th period of Medicine. The OSCE was carried out at the Realistic Simulation Center and its circuit consisted of two Collective Health stations and two Urgency and Emergency stations, replicated three times. After the evaluation, the students answered the instrument containing 32 questions. The questions permeated the perceptions of those evaluated about the OSCE, the stations, the evaluators, the evaluation process, regarding learning and post-evaluation feelings. Data were tabulated and applied to absolute and relative frequency distribution. The results show that in the general perception of the tool there was a frequency of 50% on the awareness of the participants regarding the importance of this assessment for learning. With regard to the perception of the OSCE stations, and its assertion “emotional interferes with performance” showed 75% agreement. The word anxiety was the most prevalent. The results allow concluding a positive trend in the perception of the method in clearly evaluating learning, however, the emotional state compromises the performance during the evaluation.