Objective structured clinical examination

This article is about medical exam. For international organization, OSCE, see Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

An objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) is a practical examination format used to assess clinical competence, especially in medicine, pharmacy and other health care disciplines. In an OSCE, candidates rotate through a series of timed stations and complete predefined clinical tasks, such as history taking, physical examination, communication, interpretation of investigations, clinical reasoning, or practical procedures.

The format was developed in the 1970s by Ronald Harden and colleagues as a response to limitations of traditional clinical examinations, including variation in the patients and examiners assigned to candidates. OSCEs are structured through planned stations, standardised instructions, checklists or rating scales, and, in many cases, real or simulated patients.

OSCEs are used in undergraduate, postgraduate, licensing, certification and formative assessment contexts. Although the format is intended to improve standardisation and sampling of clinical skills, its reliability and validity depend on how stations, examiners, scoring criteria and standard-setting procedures are implemented.