OSCE Short Guide - How to Create the Station Mark Sheet Notes Handout

Sep 20, 2026

Uploaded by Sage

Slides supporting OSCE station design and the creation of a station mark sheet notes handout, building on provided worked station design documents. The material guides participants through trying out ideas for designing stations, testing station layouts using interactive formats such as carousels and double stations. It also reviews the development of the OSCE, emphasizing reliability, validity, and measurement of the right competencies, including sampling strategies via a skills-context matrix and progressive layering of complexity.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryExam

FormatPDF

Pages28

Reading Time1 h 11 min

AccessFree to download

Station design overview

Interactive station formats and carousel setup

Development and principles of OSCE

Reliability, validity, and measurement of the right thing

Designing assessment using a skills matrix

Sampling skills across contexts

Increasing complexity with layers

This set of slides should be read in conjunction with the worked examples of the station design documents that you should have received along with this talk. The workshop will build on this foundation of knowledge – allow you to try out your ideas on designing a station – then test it out. I’m assuming there’s a lot of experience of OSCEs – but just to ensure we’ve all got the same ideas in our minds here are some pictures of an OSCE in Malawi illustrating an OSCE set-up and an OCE plan with 10 candidates going around 10 stations . Usually a carousel of 5-10min stations with perhaps some rest stations to accommodate more candidates per carousel, and sometimes including double stations linking two tasks – and in which case there needs to be 2 of that double station. Here is a list of fairly typical interactive stations The development of the OSCE was triggered by the arguments of reliability and validity. The rest of this slide is for ‘further reading’for those who are interested. Away back in 1947 the GMC raised concerns about intermarker variation in clinical exams and John Stokes in 1967 after examining across the US wrote a report to the NBME making recommendations to address the lack of correlation. GM Wilson (Professor of Medicine in Glasgow) and Ron Harden built on these findings – to create the OSCE in 1975 So to summarise the development – it was all about moving from the long case where different problems, patients and examiners all confounded the reliability of the decisions about the students’ competence–to the OSCE which focused on standardised conditions with structured questions and objective marking If I were to ask you to define a high quality OSCE you would probably say it’s about the characteristics described on this slide. And an important part of passing and failing the correct students is to measure the right thing. We can’t assess everything so we want to sample carefully so we get an accurate idea of the big picture. So we may start off with a simple matrix like this showing a range of skills e. g. history taking that are to be assessed in a range of contexts e. g. renal patients ……… And develop the matrix with layers of complexity as appropriate.

FAQs

What are these slides intended to be used with?

Use the slides alongside the worked examples of the station design documents provided with the talk, which form the foundation for trying out station design ideas.

How are interactive stations typically organised for OSCEs?

Stations are often arranged as a carousel of 5–10 minutes, with possible rest stations, and may include double stations that link two tasks requiring two double-station setups.

Why was the OSCE development driven by reliability and validity?

The OSCE was created to address issues in earlier long-case formats where varying problems, patients, and examiners confounded decision reliability, replacing them with standardized conditions, structured questions, and objective marking.

Sep 20, 2026

Uploaded by Sage