An Evaluation of the Osce as a Tool for Clinical Assessment in Second-Year Medical Students at Umm Al-Qura University: Students’ Views

Background: The Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) is a commonly used assessment tool for medical students. Cognitive, psychomotor, and professional behavior are some of the competencies assessed by the tool. Understanding how students perceive OSCE is critical in ensuring that it is optimally designed, fair, and educational, particularly during early clinical training. Purpose: The objective of this study was to evaluate the perceptions of second-year medical students regarding the OSCE at Umm Al-Qura University, encompassing aspects such as preparation, design, fairness, validity, reliability, and stress.  Methods: The study incorporated a cross-sectional descriptive analytical research design. Self- administered questionnaires were distributed to the second-year medical students after completing the OSCE assessment. Perception across five domains, including preparation and resources, design and experience, fairness and effectiveness, validity and reliability, and stress and anxiety were evaluated. Descriptive statistics such as medians and interquartile ranges were calculated. Cronbach's alpha was used to assess the internal consistency of the questionnaire, and the chi-square tests were utilized to evaluate the associations between gender and selected perception items, with significance set at p<0.05. Results: 252 students were involved in the study, yielding a response rate of 54.4%. The median age was 20 years (Interquartile range = 1). The majority of the respondents were female (n = 128, 50.8%) compared to males (n =  124, 49.2%). Overall, students reported positive attitudes towards the OSCE in all domains, with a median score of 4 for most of the items. Internal consistency the survey ranged from good to acceptable across all domains (Cronbach’s alpha range: 0.695 –0.844). Based on the chi-square analysis, there were no significant gender differences for the selected perception items; however, a significant association was found between gender and perception of OSCE validity (χ² (2, N  =  252)  =  7.06, p  =  0.03). Male students demonstrated that they were more likely to agree that OSCE scores reflected essential clinical skills compared to females. Conclusion: Generally, the OSCE was perceived as a fair, valid, and effective assessment tool by the second-year medical students. However, the moderate response rate (54.4%) represents a limitation that may affect generalizability. The findings support the use of OSCE as an assessment tool in early medical training and highlight opportunities to improve student support and assessment design.