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.
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 enrolled their interns for evaluation in one of four sessions. This year, Emergency Medicine raised that number to 15 programs for a total of 107 interns assessed.
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.
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. We will update this story with that full list of acknowledgements soon.