Effectiveness of OSCE in assessment of clinical competencies andperception of OSCE among nursing students

INTRODUCTION Evaluation Techniques have an important role in evaluating studentsrsquo learning outcomes and their mastery of a subject. Objective structured clinical examination OSCE is one of the best evaluation techniques which can accurately evaluate basic care giving skills of nursing students. This article explores the use of the objective structured clinical examination OSCE in undergraduate nursing education.OBJECTIVES To determine the effectiveness of OSCE in appraisal of clinical skills in Pediatric Nursing among III yr B Sc Nursing students. To explore and describe the perception of students regarding OSCE as a method of clinical evaluationMETHODOLOGY A cross sectional descriptive survey design was adopted for the study and 34 third year BSc Nursing students were selected by convenience sampling technique. The study was conducted at R L Jalapa Hospital and Research Centre Parent Hospital of Sri Devaraj Urs College of Nursing Kolar. OSCE evaluation questionnaire developed by Pierre et al 2004 was adopted in this study.RESULTS Majority of students agreed exams are well administered and covered wide area of knowledge. With regard to valuation of assessment of Quality of OSCE performance testing majority of students agreed to a great extent that Instructions were clear and unambiguous Regarding Assessment of student perception of validity amp reliability of OSCE majority believed that OSCE scores provided true measure of essential clinical skills.CONCLUSION The findings indicated that as an assessment tool the objective of overall nursing studentsrsquo perception about OSCE was positive The OSCE was found to be a useful and acceptable method for evaluating nursing studentsrsquo clinical competence in the area of Pediatric Nursing.KEY WORDS OSCE clinical competencies Nursing students