Application of the Objective Structure Clinical Evaluation in Evaluating Clinical Competence for a BSN Program

Given the complex clinical situations and the dynamic nature of nursing, the greatest challenge for nursing educators is performing objective evaluation of students’ clinical competence. The Objective Structured Clinical Evaluation (OSCE) is designed to address this challenge and it has been widely used in nursing education. However, its implementation in nursing education in Taiwan has been limited. Accordingly, a quasi-experimental design was utilized to examine students’ clinical performance and stress levels using a 12-station OSCE assessment. Further, we investigated the inter-rater reliability and internal consistency of the OSCE. After controlling for scores of clinical performance, overall differences in preand post-practicum stress in the OSCE group were significantly higher than in the control group (F (1, 89) = 4.89, p = 0.03). There was no group effect on practicum performance after controlling for grade point average (F (1, 89) = 2.69, p = 0.14). Cronbach’s alpha for 12 OSCE stations ranged from 0.22 to 0.80 and inter-rater reliability for all 12 stations showed Pearson’s r ranging between 0.76 and 1.00. Cohen’s kappa ranged from 0.70 to 1.00 (p < 0.001). Future studies should explore how OSCE can be best and most cost-effectively incorporated into the BSN curriculum.