ABSTRACT

Objective: To compare the performance of medical students in the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) of the final MBBS Examination across the four campuses of The University of the West Indies, over a two-year period.

Design and Methods: All final examination results of the Medicine and Therapeutics OSCE were collected from the Faculty of Medical Science at the four campuses of The University of the West Indies and analyzed using both parametric (t-tests and ANOVAs) and non-parametric tests (chi-squared tests).

Results: Results indicated that students achieved significantly higher mean scores in the 2002 examination than in 2001 (t = 3.85, df = 415, p = 0.000). There were no significant differences between campuses with regards to the mean corrected score in 2001. Also in 2001, in adult stations, all campuses achieved significantly higher scores than Jamaica. However, in Jamaica, mean child health station scores were significantly higher than all other campuses and, the mean score in Trinidad and Tobago was higher than the Bahamas and Barbados. In 2002, all other campuses achieved significantly higher scores than Trinidad and Tobago and females performed significantly better than males with regards to overall mean scores (t = 2.814, df = 189, p = 0.005). Also in 2002, Barbados achieved significantly higher mean corrected scores than Trinidad and Tobago (F = 4.649, df = 3,191; p = 0.004) and Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago both obtained significantly higher mean child health station scores than Jamaica.

Conclusions: The important conclusion from this study is that the OSCE scores in Medicine and Therapeutics are generally uniform across the four campuses of the University, thereby confirming the consistency of the approach to teaching and helping to validate the efficacy and veracity of the medical graduate being produced by The University of the West Indies.