Innovation in Conducting and Scoring a Clerkship Objective Structured Clinical Examination

Evaluation of student clinical performance is an essential task for medical educators. Standardized patients and objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) can be useful tools in clinical evaluation but are often limited by artificiality, tedious scoring of open-ended responses, and limited scoring options. We describe the adaptation of an existing OSCE that decreases the need for pretest preparation, minimizes cuing effects, and increases scoring flexibility. Student response is favorable, and the use of computer-based scoring programs and optical scan technology allows faculty to spend more time on student observation, feedback, and problem development.