Assessing musculoskeletal examination skills and diagnostic reasoning of 4th year medical students using a novel objective structured clinical exam

摘要

BackgroundMedical students have difficulty performing and interpreting musculoskeletal physical examinations and interpreting the findings. Research has focused on students' knowledge deficits, but there are few direct assessments of students' ability to perform a hypothesis-driven physical examination (HDPE). We developed a novel musculoskeletal Objective Structured Clinical Exam (OSCE) focusing on HDPE skills for disorders of the shoulder, back and knee, and used it to explore medical student diagnostic reasoning.