RESUMO
Acupuncturists should have clinical competency, including knowledge, skill and humanity, such as attitude.<BR>In acupuncture and moxibustion educational institutions, educational objectives and strategies have been established to develop competency as a therapist. Therefore, an evaluation was performed in order to confirm the achievement of the learners, and whether the established initial objectives and strategies were appropriate or not.<BR>As a matter of course, the National Examination for Acupuncture and Moxibustion Therapists is an evaluation standard which assesses the social competency oftherapists completing the educational course, namely they must have significance.<BR>However, the current National Examination can only estimate the aspect of knowledge. Each educational in-stitution should, therefore, responsibly evaluate other acupuncturists' competency including skills and attitudes toward their competency insociety.<BR>In the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE), an adequate method to evaluate clinicians has widely been introduced for medical education.<BR>The OSCE was introduced to educational circles of acupuncture in Japan because OSCE can evaluate competency; i.e. the psychomotor and affective domain, that is difficult to measure using a paper test.<BR>Various difficulties still remain using OSCE for the education of acupuncture students in the view of both its adequacy and objectivity.<BR>In the present paper, the actual condition and difficulty in using OSCE in education of acupuncture students are reviewed based on the reports presented atthe educational session of the conference.
