DESIGNING, IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION OF OSCE TO ASSESS NURSING STUDENTS CLINICAL COMPETENCE IN JIROFT FACULTY OF NURSING AND MIDWIFERY

Assessment of nursing students' clinical competency is one of the concerns of nursing instructors. This descriptive study was conducted with the aim of designing, implementation and evaluation of Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) for assessing the clinical competence of nursing students in nursing faculty of Jiroft.

This cross sectional study was conducted in three stages: designing, implementation and evaluation. Firstly, according to the priority of the instructors, 10 skills were selected from nursing clinical skills and their checklists were developed. 27 nursing students participated in OSCE on one day. For assessment of OSCE Kirkpatrick model, Criterion validity and reliability was measured. For criterion validity, correlation between the last 4 clinical scores mean and total OSCE score was measured. A likert three points questionnaire with 16 items and one open question at the end of questionnaire was used to examine the students' reaction to OSCE according to the Kirkpatrick model.

In results 50% of all students were completely satisfied, 34.6% (N=10) were relatively satisfied from OSCE, and 57.7% (N=16) of the students believed that OSCE has shown their learning weaknesses. 76.9% (N=21) of students believed OSCE as an opportunity for learning. 96/2% (N=27) believed that OSCE was stressful. Qualitative analysis of the open question led two categories including the strengths of test and the weaknesses of test. The correlation between the total score of OSCE and the criterion validity was 0.43 and was significant. In the internal consistency of OSCE, the correlation between total score and each station score was significantly positive, except the basic resuscitation station, communication with the patient station and professional ethics station. The Cronbach's alpha calculated between stations' scores was 0.55.

OSCE as a valid, reliable and nursing student’s accepted assessment tool is recommended to assessing nursing skills