MBBS IV OSCE Submission

Quick Links:

• Submission to Assessment Committee
• Letters to Heads of Disciplines

We have made available here the submissions (below) that the Adelaide Medical Students' Society (AMSS) put to the Assessment Committee regarding their plan to abolish the compulsory summative end-of-year Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) in Fourth Year, as promised at the AMSS Fourth Year Welcome on Monday 24 January 2011. As you will be aware this plan to abolish the end-of-year OSCE in Fourth Year has been approved. Click here to view the submissions.

Please note that the AMSS Assessment Policy available here is a draft only. This was subsequently presented to the AMSS Committee on Monday 4 April 2011 and passed with minor change. It is available for viewing here.

As is mentioned in our submission, we would also like to note here that the Assessment Committee applies strictly limited resources to achieve optimal student outcomes. Students should recognise the members of this Assessment Committee make decisions with the best interests of students at heart.

The AMSS is aware that there is a significant amount of consternation amongst the current Fourth Year cohort regarding both the changes to assessment within Fourth Year, and the response of the AMSS to these changes. We are very eager to be transparent with our membership and to ensure that we are indeed representing the majority student opinion. This is why these documents have been made accessible online, and why we are actively seeking student opinion and input.

There have been a number of developments since these documents were written and sent. In particular, the AMSS became aware in early February that the planned changes to end-of-rotation assessment may not have adequately supplemented the feedback lost to Fourth Years through the abolition of the end-of-year Fourth Year OSCE. This would have been problematic because it could have meant that students may have proceeded through Fourth Year and reached their Barrier Examinations in Fifth Year having never had any experience with an OSCE station on, for example, surgery or orthopaedics. Furthermore the failure to introduce commensurate end-of-rotation assessment throughout Fourth Year would mean that students receive less overall feedback on their performance, thereby depriving them of opportunities to tailor and focus their learning.

The AMSS became seriously concerned about these developments because we perceived them to represent an overall diminution in the educational experience being offered in Fourth Year. We continue to be particularly worried by the fact that these changes are directly the result of increasing student numbers and consequent inadequate funding for the Medical Program. We thought it would be pertinent to act quickly to express our principle-based position that the removal of the end-of-year OSCE in Fourth Year should not result in an overall reduction in the amount of assessment and feedback that is provided to students. To satisfy this standpoint the end-of-rotation assessment that occurs for the four major Fourth Year rotations (Medical Home Unit, Surgical Home Unit, Psychological Health, Musculoskeletal Medicine) must be increased to a level which adequately supplements the assessment previously included in the now-extinct end-of-year OSCE. Letters to this effect were sent to the relevant Heads of the Disciplines; you can view these letters here.

Letters to Heads of Disciplines

May 2011

View online (below), or click here to download the pdf.

February 2011