OSCE activities for residents

By: Julie McCoy April 23rd, 2009

In the April issue of Residency Program alert, I profiled Charleston Area Medical Center (CAMC) and the institution’s use of an OSCE during orientation to gauge new resident’s skills.

During the OSCE, residents must:

Perform a H&P using a standardized patient
Perform a clinical procedure using a standardized patient, partial task trainer, or hybrid combination
Write orders for tests, labs, etc., based on their assessment
Interpret test or lab results
Present findings to an attending physician
Complete a team-based ACLS activity as part of the patient cases

As you can imagine, it takes CAMC quite awhile to do all of these activities with all of their incoming residents and not everyone can be working with the standardized patients at the same time. CAMC rotates residents in groups through the OSCE as well as two other activities to ensure everyone is busy.

The first activity is a test using questions from the USMLE Step III practice exams, says Gordon Green, MD medical education consultant at CAMC. This gives program directors and faculty members a heads up on who may have trouble passing the real exam, and they can work with these residents to better prepare them for the exam.

The second activity also has to do with passing exams. Residents attend an exam preparation course to find out whether or not they have difficulty with exams from a skill perspective, anxiety, or deficits in knowledge. “We provide them with advice on how to improve their standardized exam taking ability,” Green says.

For those of you who do OSCEs in your institution/program, what do you have residents do while they wait to go through the various stations?

Comments(2) Educational Resources, Residency Program Alert, Resident Well Being, orientation

Comments

By Susan Potter on April 28th, 2009 at 7:48 am

We have a six station OSCE that includes 10 electrocardiograms and 10 chest radiographs. We have a Pulmonary Fellow going over the films in the room during the OSCE with the residents. The unfinished ECG’s can be taken home and we arrange a follow up noon session to review them with the Chief Resident. IF we have time, we include one or two of the CXR’s at this session, too.

By Kathryn Schmidt on April 28th, 2009 at 8:52 am

Somerset Family Medicine Residency does OSCE’s once a year for all current residents and a separate Orientation OSCE for all new residents in the first few months of residency. We have 6-7 stations for each OSCE and a group of 6-7 residents rotates through the station at one time. Our faculty has been doing OSCE’s for a long time and has developed checklists that parallel the ACGME competencies.