Clinical Teachers' Viewpoints towards Objective Structured Clinical Examination in Kerman University of Medical Science

Introduction: Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) is an appropriate method for evaluating students’ clinical competencies. This study was performed to determine the viewpoints of clinical teachers towards clinical evaluation through OSCE in Kerman University of Medical Sciences. Method: In this descriptive study, all clinical teachers in the fields of medicine, dentistry, nursing, midwifery and heath in Kerman University of Medical Sciences (N=266) were included as the study population. The response rate was 74.4%. A researcher–made questionnaire consisted of 5 domains of cultural, facilities, technical information, time, and characteristics of the test, was used for data collection. The data was analyzed using ANOVA, t-test, Spearman and Pearson correlation coefficient. Results: From 198 participants in this study, more than half of them were male (55.1%) with the mean age of 47.8±4.7. The most frequent academic rank, study discipline and university degree were assistant professor, medicine and PhD or specialty or sub-specialty, respectively. The most agreement was on the facilities domain (14.9±2.526) and the lowest agreement was related to the technical information domain (8.91±2.77). There was a difference between the viewpoints of the clinical teachers based on the variables of educational degree, discipline, academic rank, educational experience and clinical services. Conclusion: Although there are problems and barriers for performing OSCE such as lack of facilities and time consuming feature of this method, they can be handled and ignored due to the advantages of this method in clinical skills evaluation. Application of this method through providing proper grounds and overcoming its barriers is recommend for all educational programs.