In 1985, at the International conference at Ottawa medical education scholars from all over the world debated and exchanged their experiences with OSPE 3. OSPE was considered to be an objective, reliable, feasible, effective, and acceptable medical education tool. From 2019 onward, the regulatory body for medical education. The Medical Council of India (MCI) has introduced competency-based medical education (CBME) curriculum. 4

All the students who were willing to participate in the study.

120 Students of II MBBS batch.

The present study was conducted during the period of September 2021 to August 2022 for a period of one year. The 120 students during exams were divided into 2 batches. Batch 1 was subjected to conventional examination and batch 2 to OSPE.

A written informed consent was taken from all students who participated in the study after the institutional ethical committee approval was obtained.

The 120 students were divided into two batches.

Batch 1: 60 students were subjected to Traditional/Conventional method

Batch 2: 60 students were subjected to OSPE

Examination was conducted as three sessions per day with 10 students in each session. During the OSPE, each student was made to rotate through 12 stations, 5 minutes for each station.

Out of 12 stations, 2 of them were performance stations while 8 were response stations and 2 rest stations. Observers with uniform check list and score card were present at the performance stations to grade the student's step wise performance based on the procedure. The exercises kept for these observed stations included blood grouping, peripheral blood smear preparation or staining, haemoglobin estimation or chemicals tests of urine analysis that were aimed at analysing the psychomotor domain of the students. At the unobserved stations, students were provided with objective questions regarding an instrument/microscopic slide/chart with clinical history and laboratory investigations/gross specimen that tested their practical knowledge. Two additional rest stations were provided after the fifth and last working station respectively labelled as ‘blank’ for students to complete the answer sheet (05 minutes each).

In the conventional assessment method, which was conducted for the other 60 students of Batch 1, each student performed a particular practical procedure which was followed by viva-voce and overall judged by the allotted examiners.

Pre-test, post-test and feedback was taken to assess and evaluate the learning improvement and effectiveness.

The questionnaire was validated by third party from within the department (internal) and expert faculty from another medical college (external). Students were provided with a standard questionnaire and asked to carefully read the questions, contemplate and then tick the option they find as the most suitable. They were not permitted to discuss amongst each other during these 20 minutes’ exercise.

Basic statistical analysis of the responses of the students in the feedback questionnaire were presented as percentages and then assessed.

Department of Pathology, Mahatma Gandhi Mission’s Medical College and Hospital, Kamothe, Navi Mumbai.

83% of the students found OSPE quite helpful while 17% found it to be barely helpful. (Figure 1)

83% of students found the that OSPE aids in the process of learning, none of them rated the method of no utility however, 4.3% were indecisive and 7.54% found it to be barely helpful.

Out of all, more than half of the students (54.47%) agreed that adequate time was given for the session while the rest did not approve of the time limit for the exercise. Almost three quarters of the students could complete the stations within the allotted time whereas, about 25% of the students found it difficult to complete it with the time limit. About 94% of the participants were of the opinion that the OSPE stations were well-organized while 6% of them didn’t agree. (Figure 2)

The analysis of instruction for each OSPE station is as shown in the Figure 3. Approximately 34% of the students stated that they were able to perform the procedure well after receiving instructions. 1.8% of the students neither agreed nor disagreed regarding instructions aiding in their performance while 11% disagreed about instructions proving to be helpful. 45.28% could comfortably perform the given exercise while as much as 1% of the participants were of the opinion that they were not comfortable to perform the exercise.

Rating its difficulty level, approximately 43.39% of students found it to be easy, 34% of students found it neither easy nor hard and around 23% students believed it to be very easy. When asked about improvement in the current settings, the most common answer received was that the students should have prior information about OSPE as a method of learning and the next commonly received answer was allotment of more time.

To conclude, the students felt that OSPE was a helpful method and created interest towards the learning of the topic as well as it was helpful in self-assessment, an easy, interesting and quick method for revision of the topics.

89% of the students were of the opinion that the study was useful, 4.84 % found it to be neither helpful nor not helpful while 6.45% found it to be barely helpful.

About 60% of the students agreed that this method was unbiased. About half the total number of students found that the time given was not adequate and couldn’t satisfactorily complete the stations. About 90% of the students believed that questions asked were covered and related to the topic. 90% of the students were of the opinion that OSPE was well-organized. On contrary, 9.67% of the students believed that it wasn’t organized properly. (Table 1)

69% of the students were clear about what is to be done, 11.29% students were indecisive while 6.45% of the students did not understand as to what is to be done. About 53% of the students believed that OSPE was less stressful than other exams, 24.19% students were indecisive and about 5% the students found it stressful.

53% of the participants found that it was easy to perform practical after OSPE exercise, 35.48% participants found it neither easy nor difficult and 6.45% found difficult to perform practical after OSPE. (Figure 4)

When asked about improvement in the current settings, the most common answer received was that the students should have prior information about OSPE as a method of learning and the next commonly received answer was allotment of more time.