The performance profile of medical students in the mock objective structured clinical examination

OBJECTIVE: Acquisition of clinical skills, after completing a course in the basic sciences, is an essential aspect of undergraduate training in any medical school. These skills are usually divided into 3 broad categories: namely, history taking, physical examination and selection of the appropriate laboratory investigations. At the end of the clerkship, the students' clinical skills have to be assessed. The main objective was to describe the performance profile of a group of medical students while examing a distended abdomen in the United Arab Emirates.

METHODS: This paper describes the performance profile of 24 randomly selected medical students in a mock objective structured clinical examination of a patient with distended abdomen in the hospital environment. Marks were allotted according to the checklist of the performance expectations. For the assessment used in this paper, ability to perform a step of the clinical examination was rated positive and documented.

RESULTS: The performance profile of the students was very good to excellent, corresponding to 9 out of 10 marks. All students identified or excluded the common signs of clinical ascites. The signs uncommonly seen in this area, such as Dupytren's contractures, were excluded by 20 of 24 (83%) students.

CONCLUSION: The excellent performance is attributed to a greater exposure to patients with mainly gastrointestinal disorders during the clerkship. The main advantage of an objective structured clinical abdominal examination, which is set up in a hospital environment, is that it reflects the real life situation of a practising physician, as opposed to using simulated patients. Although, a structured clinical examination is labor-intensive and costly, the advantages outweigh the work and cost of setting it up.