OSCE

This past weekend, we had a 4 hour final exam for our Foundations of Patient Care class, the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE). Its goal was to assess our readiness to begin clinical activities of third year, assessing us on such criteria as communication, physical examination, clinical reasoning, and writing skills. We had six stations with a 20 minute patient interaction, a short writing exercise, and a feedback session on our performance. The stations had both patient actors and real patients (with their physician). It was grueling yet it went fast; it kind of gives us a sense of what third year might be like seeing patient after patient. I can't write too much about the specifics of the exam, but I did a cardiac exam on a real patient with findings, a few H&P's (history and physicals) on standardized actors depicting a wide range of chief concerns, a delivery of bad news (new diagnosis for someone not expecting it), and an interview of a patient with a "hidden agenda" (his chief complaint was not what he came in for). The standardized patients individually had different "personalities" and we had to adapt to them. If I dare say it, it was a fairly fun (for a Sunday final at least) experience and it actually helped build more confidence in my limited clinical abilities.