Interns warm up for the wards: OSCEs 2026

ByInternal Medicine at Iowa

For the tenth year since its inception, incoming interns from multiple University of Iowa Health Care residency programs, including all those in Internal Medicine, took part in the Objective Structured Clinical Evaluations (OSCEs) earlier this week. The half-day assessment gives each intern a baseline read on their own core clinical skills demonstrated at a series of stations, like delivering oral presentations or obtaining informed consent.

Always open to feedback and revision, last year program leadership temporarily rebranded the OSCE but found the name-change less effective at addressing concerns. OSCE Co-Directors Jane S. Rowat, BS, MS, and Manish Suneja, MD, always stress to interns that the OSCEs is a formative exercise rather than a graded evaluation that they might recall from medical school.

[This visual graphic depicts the OSCE stations, the skills being assessed, and the role of faculty observers.]

Each participating residency program’s leadership uses the results to guide instruction and give interns a chance to self-assess their progress over the course of the year. For the last few years, 14 residency programs within UI Health Care have enrolled their interns for evaluation in one of four sessions. This year, Emergency Medicine raised that number to 15 programs. With the addition of Emergency Medicine, a total of 105 interns from Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, Neurology, OB/GYN, Pediatrics, and Surgery participated.

In response to changes in technology and day-to-day expectations, organizers have added the Handoff station, where interns practiced using Epic Secure Chat. This exercise was incorporated in response to the tool’s growing role in day-to-day clinical communication. Interns had the chance to gain hands-on practice with the platform, which they’re likely to rely on for secure, real-time communication with colleagues once they’re on the wards.

Feedback from the interns helps shape future sessions. Here is a sample of some of the comments organizers received:

  • It is an immersive experience with real world scenario and it will help me get ready for the upcoming residency.
  • I think it is designed to see where you are, your strengths, areas to improve. It can be used as a baseline so that you can see how much I develop my clinical skills.
  • Great feedback on each encounter, appreciate that it was immediate feedback and not delayed by several days/weeks. Targeted feedback will help my development.
  • Very helpful to have multiple scenarios in one afternoon to simulate transitioning the diversity of patient care we will experience in the hospital.
  • I thought all of the patient simulations were helpful. I think presentation session was the one I was most prepared for since I have done a lot of those throughout medical school. I’m glad we did a nurse phone call (night call), oral presentations, difficult conversation, handoffs and informed consent because those were all super helpful. I liked the imaging/EKGs because it showed me that I need to work on my chest xrays!

Learn more about the program from the perspective of one of our interns and a couple simulated patients:

The event continues to depend on the support of the Carver College of Medicine’s Simulated Patient Program, along with the many station observers, program leaders, and department and college administrators who help run it each year.

Internal Medicine Station Observers from Medicine, Med/Psych and Neurology

  • Cameron Brownlee (Chief Resident)
  • Andy Bryant
  • Amanda Chang (Chief Resident)
  • Christina Charis-Donelson
  • Tracey Cho
  • Claudia Corwin
  • Taylor Cox
  • Brian Gehlbach
  • Sreedevi Jenigiri
  • Reed Johnson
  • Annie Killoran
  • Carly Kuehn
  • Melissa Ludgate
  • Maluki Radford (Chief Resident)
  • Tyler Schmidt
  • Ashten Sherman (Chief Resident)
  • Trisha Slehria (Chief Resident)
  • Justin Smock
  • Jenny Strouse
  • Roger Struble
  • Andrea Swenson
  • Joe Szot
  • Andrea Weber
  • Yana Zemkova

OSCE Station Trainers

  • Lisa Antes
  • Carly Kuehn
  • Lee Sanders
  • Matt Soltys
  • Jenny Strouse

OSCE Administration

  • Manish Suneja, OSCE Co-Director
  • Jane Rowat, OSCE Co-Director
  • Abbey Gilpin, Internal Medicine Residency Program Administrator
  • Stacy Sueppel, Internal Medicine Residency Program Coordinator
  • Lori Strommer, Electronic Evaluation Management

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