Students’ perception and scores in Paediatrics end-of-clerkship and final professional Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE): A comparative study

Objectives: This study aims to understand students’ perception of the usefulness of end-of-clerkship (EOC) as compared to professional exam Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCE) and to compare student performance in both examinations.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study of medical students who were studying in the final year at Shifa College of Medicine, Shifa Tameer-e-Millat University, and appeared in both end-of-clerkship and final professional exams. The study was conducted in October 2019. The data was collected through a self-constructed questionnaire. The scores of all participants were also recorded. The data obtained was analyzed on IBM’s statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) version 23 (IBM, Armonk, NY). Descriptive statistics were used for qualitative variables. Mean and standard deviation was calculated for quantitative variables. Chi-square test was also applied to assess for significant differences.

Results: Out of 115 participants, 57 (49.6%) were males and 58 (50.4%) were females. Most of the participants (75.7%) agreed that both OSCEs were well-structured. Participants found that both the exams give a good cross-section of paediatrics and allowed them to learn something new (p=0.00). 45% of participants perceived that the end-of-clerkship OSCE exam helped in orienting them for the final professional exam by identifying their weaknesses.

Conclusion: Although the EOC OSCE served as a good preparatory exercise, it did not alleviate the stress levels. However, the results in both OSCEs were comparable and students were satisfied with the current weightage of marks distribution.