Reliability and validity of OSCE in evaluating clinical skills of nursing students

Objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) is one of the preferable means of evaluating cognitive, emotional and psychomotor aspects of nursing students. The present study was designed to determine the reliability and validity of OSCE in evaluating clinical skills of nursing students.

For this descriptive study, 10 different skills of nursing students were selected. Then, 37 students performed these skills at 10 different OSCE stations, during which two experienced inspectors evaluated their performance. Finally, the correlation between OSCE scores and the mean theoretical and clinical performance scores of students was calculated. Meanwhile, the correlation between the total OSCE scores with OSCE score of each station was determined. Inspectors’ reliability (correlation between scores reported by inspectors at each station) was also calculated.

The correlation coefficient of OSCE scores and mean theoretical and clinical performance scores were 0.38 (p=0.031) and 0.52 (p=0.005), respectively. Correlation coefficient of inspectors’ reliability was in a range of 0.38-0.95.

OSCE is strongly suggested as a reliable and valid means of evaluating nursing students’ clinical skills.