Psychometric Properties of an Objective Structured Clinical Assessment Tool

Background: Inconsistencies in approaches to clinical teaching and evaluation can lead to significant challenges in the absence of reliable, standardized assessment measures. The purpose of our research was to examine the psychometric properties of a rubric to evaluate students in a simulation testing environment. Method: Two raters used an evaluation rubric to score the performance of 33 students taking part in an objective structured clinical assessment (OSCA). Content validity and inter-rater reliability statistics were calculated. Results: The OSCA as a whole demonstrated excellent content validity and acceptable inter-reliability was obtained on the evaluation rubric. Conclusions: Given the right process, structure, and support, our results indicate that the OSCA is a robust and reliable approach to evaluate student clinical performance.