Assessment of Medical Students by OSPE Method in Pathology (Original Work) (Objective Structured Clinical Examination) (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION Undergraduate medical education is currently undergoing extensive re-evaluation. This is because the conventional clinical and practical examination is beset with several problems. Although marking should depend only on student variability, examiner variability significantly affects scoring. The marks awarded also reflect only the global performance of the candidate and are not based on demonstration of individual competencies. Problems in communication significantly affect the outcome. Attitudes are usually not tested at all by the conventional examination There is a conscious attempt to define new core educational objectives. These defects of clinical and practical examinations have been realized for long and have given rise to attempts at improving the current scenario. (1-3) It has led to the development of new exam systems which can test all the objectives systematically. (4,5) All these attempts are relatively new and are still in the process of being tried out. An earlier innovation in this regard is the objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) later extended to the practical examination (OSPE) described in 1975 and in greater detail in 1979 by Harden and his group from Dundee. (6,7) This method with some modifications has stood the test of time and has largely overcome the problems of the conventional clinical examinations mentioned earlier. Recently, the method was the subject of an international conference at Ottawa in 1985 when the worldwide experiences with OSCE and OSPE were exchanged. (8) OSPE was also proposed for medical undergraduates in Pathology by Ramnarayan in 1990. (9)