Abstract

Background: A traditional clinical examination (TCE) in physiology focuses on the “knows” and “knows how” aspects and is inadequate in evaluating the overall performance of the students. Objective structured practical examination (OSPE) focuses on the “shows how” aspect of Miller’s pyramid of competence.

Objective: This study was aimed to compare and establish the relation of the marks given by examiners with varied teaching experiences in determining the validity and reliability of TCE and OSPE.

Materials and Methods: A total of 50 first-year MBBS students in Physiology were divided in two batches of 25 each. These were further divided in three batches with eight, eight, and nine students examined by three examiners with teaching experience of 35 years, 6 years, and 1 year, respectively, in each batch. All the examiners conducted TCE followed by OSPE for the same batch of students for four modules in abdominal system.

Results: Analysis of variance and post hoc Bonferroni’s test for comparative study among examiners in TCE showed significant difference (module A, P = 0.000; module B, P = 0.000) in the mean marks given by all the three examiners while OSPE showed no significant difference (module A, P = 0.829; module B, P = 0.842) in the mean marks given by all the examiners for all the modules.

Conclusion: OSPE is an objective, structured, unbiased assessment method that can be incorporated with less experienced examiners along with the TCE for overall assessment of the students.

Key words: Objective structured practical examination (OSPE); traditional clinical examination (TCE); reliability; validity; examiner’s bias