gms | German Medical Science

Practical skills study that makes the real professionals from the students and prepares them to the work in modern hospitals is very important part of medical education. Medical universities should be always in the way of educational process improvement to achieve the optimal combination between theoretical and practical students’ knowledge. Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) is one of the interesting modern methods which allow performing control for practical skills. We were interested in OSCE presented at 11th Graz Conference and decided to implement it at our university. We oered it for the students of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th years of studies. In computer database all OSCE tasks were divided in four groups: focused cases history taking, focused physical examination, interpretation of diagnostic materials (such as labs, microscopic, ECGs, X-rays, CT etc.) and performing of practical skills (such as venepuncture, vaginal bimanual exam, rectal digital exam, performing urinary catheterisation, mixing and injecting drugs etc). Question card consisted from 12 practical tasks from dierent clinical disciplines. Student had to pass 12 OSCE stations. At every station student could get 1 or 0 for the performing of the task. The necessary requirements were for example – minimal comments and maximal actions, execution of the task according standard algorithm. For performing of practical skills were used manikins, also for OSCE were involved real hospital patients and in some situations we used special trained actors.

It is clear that we need more time to make some conclusions, but we guess to achieve improvement of practical and communicative skills of our medical students due to OSCE.