Experience of Nursing Professors and Students in Relation to the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE): A Qualitatve Study

Abstract

Clinical examination in medical sciences is one of the important educational pillars. One of these examinations is the clinical examination for final year nursing students to graduate and enter the labor market. The aim of this study is to explain the experience of nursing professors and students in relation to the clinical competency test by OSCE method.This is a qualitative study with a conventional content analysis approach with the participation of 7 professors and 21 nursing graduates who passed the OSCE exam in 2019 in School of Nursing and Midwifery in East of Guilan, in northern Iran. The sampling method was purposeful and the data collection method was semi-structured interviews. The steps proposed by Granheim and Landmann were used to perform the data analysis process and, the validity of the findings was evaluated based on Guba and Lincoln criteria.Based on the statements of the participants in the interviews, 3 main categories and 10 subcategories were extracted that, the main categories and subcategories were, respectively: efficient test (the need to re-read the courses, the student's benchmark, randomly arranged questions), test holes (incomplete ability to assess the test, heavy shadow of mental history, small portfolio of experience), in the way of test promotion (expansion of the variety of examination, the short distance from science to practice, the effect of the colored test, the application of stress reduction methods). It seems that the OSCE, despite some problems such as stressfulness, unknown test from the students' point of view, is a suitable test for evaluating students before their graduation. Utilizing the point of view of professors and students can eliminate or reduce the shortcomings and strengthen the positive points for planning and holding OSCE exams in the future.