Abstract:
Background: One of the essential components of learning and educational program is
evaluation or examination. Among the various methods for evaluating clinical skills, Objective
Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) has been recognized as the most reliable method for
evaluating clinical skills. Due to lack of objective clinical assessment, competency in clinical
assessment in government nursing schools in Sri Lanka has become compromised. Only few
nursing schools have introduced this method at the end of their introductory clinical
procedures. As an important group of stakeholders, the feedback of the students who
experienced OSCE, is important in improving it as an evaluation method in basic nursing
diploma programme.
Objectives: To evaluate the students’ perception on OSCE method among first year nursing
students of selected government nursing schools in Sri Lanka
Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional survey with a randomly selected 387 first year nursing
students at Schools of Nursing, Kandana and Kurunegala was conducted. Data collection was
done with a pre-tested, self-administered questionnaire prepared by the researchers within two
weeks of completion of the OSCE. Data were described using descriptive and inferential
statistics. Significance was set as p <0.05.
Results: Response rate was 92%. The mean (±SD) age was 22 (±1) years. Majority of nursing
students were females (n = 360, 94.6%), Sinhalese (n = 385, 99.5%) and Buddhists (n = 372,
96.1%). Results indicated that the view of most of the students regarding OSCE test was good;
good perception (48.6%) and relatively good perception (50.9%). OSCE test has been good in
terms of fairness (46.8%), suitability (52.2%), comprehensiveness (67.2%) and accessibility
(31.3% ). Socio-demographic factors did not significantly associate with students’ perception
about OSCE (p >0.05).
Conclusions: Nursing students positively perceived the OSCE as a good evaluation method of
clinical examination in terms of fairness, suitability, acceptability and comprehensiveness. The
Nursing schools should use OSCE more often in evaluating students, initiate those who never
used OSCE and in enhancing quality of the test.
