Objective structured clinical examination

An objective structured clinical examination, or OSCE for short, is like playing pretend doctor with your friends. Just like how you might play doctor and pretend to give your friend a check-up, doctors and medical students also need to practice giving check-ups to real patients in order to become really good at their jobs.

An OSCE is a special way for doctors and medical students to practice their skills in a safe and controlled environment. This means that they don't have to worry about accidentally hurting a patient or doing something wrong. Instead, they get to practice on pretend patients who are played by actors.

During an OSCE, the medical student or doctor will have to go through a series of different tasks. They might have to take the patient's blood pressure, ask them a series of questions, or even perform a basic physical exam. Each task is designed to help them learn a different skill and become comfortable with different medical procedures.

The OSCE is called "objective" because everyone who takes part in it is scored on the same criteria. This means that the medical students or doctors are all being judged on the same skills, making it a fair and equal testing environment.