University Student's Point of View about Clinical Evaluation Using Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE), Kerman School of Dentistry

Clinical evaluation of medical students using OSCE has been introduced as an efficient way. Nowadays, this method is applied in some departments of Kerman School of Dentistry for clinical evaluation. This research was conducted to assess the university students’ point of view about clinical evaluation using OSCE in Kerman University of Medical Sciences to inform educational authorities about present problems together with evaluating students’ opinions. In this cross sectional study, 89 dentistry students answered a questionnaire including 12 multiple choice questions and two open ended questions. The validity and reliability of the questionnaire were already confirmed. According to the results of this study, most of the students (78.6%) declared that holding practical final exams and clinical evaluation in the form of OSCE increased their stress. Only 34.8% gave a positive reply to the question concerning whether OSCE is a useful clinical evaluation method. 20.2 percent agreed with continuing OSCE and 61.3% were against it. An increase in students’ stress could affect their disagreement with evaluation using OSCE. Unlike students’ negative approach towards efficacy of holding OSCE and considering its global satisfactory results, useful steps should be taken to improve OSCE and attract students’ satisfaction, after solving pitfalls and making improvements. Further studies are suggested to assess the efficacy of these actions.