Development and Conduct of Tele-Objective Structured Clinical Examination (Tele-OSCE) to Assess Clinical Pharmacy Competencies During COVID-19 Emergency Remote Teaching

Restrictions in face-to-face contact during the COVID-19 pandemic have necessitated the conversion to online teaching–learning activities. To assess relevant competencies of a Master’s in Clinical Pharmacy student cohort, an online tele-objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) was developed and conducted using Microsoft Teams®. Afterward, a survey was conducted to determine the acceptance of tele-OSCE by students and faculty members. Students’ performance was also compared to a previous cohort that underwent face-to-face OSCE. The majority of students generally agreed that tele-OSCE was operationally easy to undertake (94.0%) and did not deter their exam performance. The majority of faculty members also generally agreed that the online platform did not deter the assessment of students’ performance and a minority disagreed on the ease of assessing counselling tasks or calculation work (13.0%). There was no statistically significant difference in students’ overall scores between the tele-OSCE and the face-to-face cohort (p > 0.05). A thoughtfully planned tele-OSCE is a feasible method of examination that allows acceptable assessment of attained clinical competencies when social distancing measures are mandated. Stakeholders should look towards fortifying IT and online platform access to support optimal emergency remote teaching.