Medical Teacher

ISSN: 0142-159X (Print) 1466-187X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/imte20

An OSCE with very limited resources: Is it possible?

Giancarlo Lucchetti, Oscarina S. Ezequiel & Alessandra L. G. Lucchetti

To cite this article: Giancarlo Lucchetti, Oscarina S. Ezequiel & Alessandra L. G. Lucchetti
(2017) An OSCE with very limited resources: Is it possible?, Medical Teacher, 39:2, 227-227, DOI:
10.1080/0142159X.2017.1270443

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0142159X.2017.1270443

Published online: 26 Dec 2016.

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An OSCE with very limited resources: Is it possible?
Dear Sir
We have read with great interest the article by Abdelaziz
et al. (2016) concerning the development of an OSCE with
limited resources and we acknowledge the challenges of
conducting it at low costs.
In support of their findings, we would like to share our
own experience in a Brazilian medical school. In Brazil, there
is currently an economic crisis, which is partially responsible
for a lack of funding from the government to the federal
institutions. Therefore, some incomes were drastically
reduced, including those for paying complex assessments
(e.g. OSCE).
In view of this problem, we had two options: stop with
OSCEs or create a low-cost OSCE. We have chosen the
second option and decided to create strategies for the
implementation of this new low-cost OSCE.
In our medical school, the OSCE is performed each
semester for all 90 students participating in the 5th-year
clerkship and the Medical Education department staff per-
form the organization. Due to the financial restraint, we
opted for a three-station mini-OSCE with a 12-student rota-
tion each time, which lasted for 3 hours. Concerning the
human resources, we invited the medical school faculty as
assessors and the PhD students from the Post-graduation
program as Standardized patients and as facilitators.
The venue used was the medical school building, which
has its classrooms in a U-shape format and the equipment
were obtained by different sources: the mannequins from
the clinical skills laboratory, furniture from the own building,
instead of an alarm bell or digital announcement we used a
whistle, all communication between organizers were carried
out through ‘‘camping’’ walkie-talkies, papers (checklists,
forms) were printed by the medical school, video documen-
MEDICAL TEACHER 227
Ben Lovell
University College London, London, UK
benlovell@doctors.org.uk
# 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
10.1080/0142159X.2016.1254754
tation was performed using tablets (provided by the organ-
izers and by faculty members), gloves and masks (through
faculty donation) and catering – beverages and cookies
(through faculty donation). The total cost of the OSCE
was  R$395.00 (US$124.00). The medical school costs were
R$75.00 (US$24.00) for printing the forms and the faculty
donation costs were R$320.00 (US$100.00).
This experience reinforces that it is possible to conduct a
mini-OSCE at low cost. According to Harden (2015), ‘‘the
cost can be reduced in the context of limited available
resources with thought, imagination and organization’’. We
agree and share the same opinion.
Disclosure statement
The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are
responsible for the content and writing of this article.
References
Abdelaziz A, Hany M, Atwa H, Talaat W, Hosny S. 2016. Development,
implementation, and evaluation of an integrated multidisciplinary
Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) in primary health
care settings within limited resources. Med Teach. 38:272–279.
Harden RM. 2015. Misconceptions and the OSCE. Med Teach.
37:608–610.
Giancarlo Lucchetti Oscarina S. Ezequiel and
Alessandra L. G. Lucchetti
Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil
g.lucchetti@yahoo.com.br
# 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
10.1080/0142159X.2017.1270443