Designing an OSCE station

The reform of the second cycle (R2C) places French medical and health faculties in a competence-based approach. The OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination), an international benchmark in the assessment of students' clinical reasoning performance, will be the tool used to award the certificate of clinical competence. It will count for 30% of the final grade and will complete the national dematerialised examinations (EDN, formerly ECNi) in 2023-2024. The OSCE circuit is a succession of simulation stations, during which one or two pedagogical tasks have to be performed within a given time. The docimological quality of an OSCE is correlated to several variables such as the number of stations, the standardised patient role writing (PS), the standardization of the examiners and the evaluation grid. Engaged in the process of the R2C, the Montpellier-Nimes medical faculty has set up a process for training disciplinary referents in order to pilot the deployment of OSCEs. We propose here a guide for generalists-teachers involved in the design of OSCE stations. It is accompanied by an article specifying the modalities of realization of an OSCE circuit intended for the organizers of the circuits.