Using systematically observed clinical encounters (SOCEs) to assess medical students’ skills in clinical settings

摘要

IntroductionThe Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) is widely used to assess the clinical performance of medical students. However, concerns related to cost, availability, and validity, have led educators to investigate alternatives to the OSCE. Some alternatives involve assessing students while they provide care to patients – the mini-CEX (mini-Clinical Evaluation Exercise) and the Long Case are examples. We investigated the psychometrics of systematically observed clinical encounters (SOCEs), in which physicians are supplemented by lay trained observers, as a means of assessing the clinical performances of medical students.