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Evaluation of a multicenter ethics objective structured clinical examination

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate a six-station ethics objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) on a volunteer sample of 66 medical students and 33 residents from three Ontario medical schools. The internal consistency reliability was 0.46 and the median interrater reliability was 0.675 (range 0.30 to 0.89). The residents’ scores were higher than those of the medical students (F=2.24, 0.046). Also, the scores differed among the three schools (F=3.19, p=0.0004). The ethics OSCE has adequate interrater reliability and construct validity, but low internal consistency reliability. There are differences among the schools that may assist in ethics curriculum evaluation and development

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Supported by the Educating Future Physicians for Ontario (EFPO) project. Dr. Singer is supported by the National Health Research and Development Program through a National Health Research Scholar award and by the American College of Physicians through a George Morris Piersol Teaching and Research Scholarship. The Centre for Bioethics is supported by a Health Systems Linked Research Unit grant (#03006) from the Ontario Ministry of Health and the William C. Harris Estate.

The views expressed herein are those of the author and may not represent those of the sponsoring groups.

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Singer, P.A., Robb, A., Cohen, R. et al. Evaluation of a multicenter ethics objective structured clinical examination. J Gen Intern Med 9, 690–692 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02599011

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