Investigating the Attitude of Graduate Psychiatrists towards Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) and Conventional Clinical Interview Examination

OBJECTIVE: In the present study, we investigated the attitude of psychiatrists who graduated in 2002-2009 towards Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) and conventional clinical interview examination (Individual Patient Assessment). METHOD: We studied 134 psychiatrists graduated; half of whom were examined with conventional clinical interview and the others with OSCE. A questionnaire was prepared by a specialist workgroup to assess the participants’ attitude towards the exams. The questionnaire was initially examined in a pilot study. The findings of the questionnaire were used to assess the graduates’ attitude towards each examination, as well as to compare the examinations. RESULTS: The OSCE group indicated a significantly more positive attitude compared to the conventional group (p = 0.03). Furthermore, the OSCE group believed the role of theoretical knowledge (p = 0.01) and pre-test practice (p = 0.03) to be significantly greater for success compared to the other group. The structure of OSCE was reported to be superior to conventional examination in terms of fairness and homogeneity (p = 0.004). First participation in exam (p = 0.04) and ultimate success in the exam (p = 0.009) were predictors of graduates’ attitude. CONCLUSION: Based on examinees ’attitudes, OSCE may be a more appropriate choice for graduation examinations of psychiatry compared to the conventional clinical interview examination.