Standardized Patient Instructors used in a Dental OSCE

Objectives: Structured clinical examinations (OSCE) for clinical competency assessment in dental education are not as widely used in dental assessment strategies compared to other clinical education curricula. Gaps in the literature exist concerning perceived value held by dental students on the use of simulated patients, such as a Standardized Patient Instructor (SPI), during a dental OSCE assessment. The aim of this study was to measure the perceived value of SPI in a dental OSCE with the use of post-OSCE questionnaires.
Methods: A 5-point Likert Scale questions measured a rating of perceived value held by students for specific aspects of the OSCE assessment tool. All data were collected from second year dental students (D2) and two years later with the same cohort of students (D4). Text comments were collected to gain information about their perceived value on each assessment tool. Descriptive statistics was applied to the Likert Scale responses and thematic analysis applied to open text answers.
Results: 92% of D2s and 89% of the D4s strongly agreed or agreed that the paper based interview was appropriate for their clinical skill level and 95% of D2s and 98% of D4s felt the SPI was appropriate for their skill level. 42% of the D4s either strongly agreed or agreed that they preferred the SPI experience over the paper based scenario compared to 56% of the D2s. Whereas 44% of the D4s either strongly agreed or agreed that they preferred the paper based scenario over the SPI experience compared to 31% of the D2s. Thematic analysis of comments found that SPI was useful because of its interactive component and their opportunity to critically think about a patient case.
Conclusions: This study encourages the use of the SPI presentation of patient scenarios in an OSCE assessment.