Objective structured clinical examination in radiology

There is a growing need for introducing objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) as a part of radiology practical examinations in India. OSCE is an established, reliable, and effective multistation test for the assessment of practical professional skills in an objective and a transparent manner. In India, it has been successfully initiated and implemented in specialties like pediatrics, ophthalmology, and otolaryngology. Each OSCE station needs to have a pre-agreed “key-list” that contains a list of objective steps prepared for uniformly assessing the tasks given to students. Broadly, OSCE stations are classified as “manned” or “unmanned” stations. These stations may include procedure or pictorial or theory stations with clinical oriented contents. This article is one of a series of measures to initiate OSCE in radiology; it analyzes the attributes of OSCE stations and outlines the steps for implementing OSCE. Furthermore, important issues like the advantages of OSCE, its limitations, a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis, and the timing of introduction of OSCE in radiology are also covered. The OSCE format in radiology and its stations needs to be validated, certified, and finalized before its use in examinations. This will need active participation and contribution from the academic radiology fraternity and inputs from faculty members of leading teaching institutions. Many workshops/meetings need to be conducted. Indeed, these collaborative measures will effectively sensitize universities, examiners, organizers, faculty, and students across India to OSCE and help successfully usher in this new format in radiology practical examinations.