ABSTRACT
Recently, objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) have been used to assess the clinical skills of medical trainees. We introduced an OSCE station for heart disease to assess clinical competence at the completion of bedside learning. The station involved students performing a 15-minute focused interview and physical examination of a simulated patient with mitral regurgitation and congestive heart failure. The physical examination included listening to a tape recording of a heart murmur. Each student was evaluated by three examiners. The average scores for the interview and physical examination were 22.3±4.0 points (perfect score, 34 points) and 15.2±2.9 points (perfect score, 22 points), respectively. Kappa statistics, which evaluate variability among examiners, revealed moderate to substantial agreement in the results for both the interview and the physical examination. This study suggests that our OSCE station is useful for assessing clinical competence at the end of bedside learning.