Students benefit from developing their own emergency medicine OSCE stations: a comparative study using the matched-pair method

Background: Students can improve the learning process by developing
their own multiple choice questions. If a similar effect occurred
when creating OSCE (objective structured clinical examination)
stations by themselves it could be beneficial to involve them in
the development of OSCE stations. This study investigates the
effect of students developing emergency medicine OSCE stations on
their test performance. Method: In the 2011/12 winter semester, an
emergency medicine OSCE was held for the first time at the Faculty
of Medicine at the University of Leipzig. When preparing for the
OSCE, 13 students (the intervention group) developed and tested
emergency medicine examination stations as a learning experience.
Their subsequent OSCE performance was compared to that of 13 other
students (the control group), who were parallelized in terms of
age, gender, semester and level of previous knowledge using the
matched-pair method. In addition, both groups were compared to 20
students who tested the OSCE prior to regular emergency medicine
training (test OSCE group). Results: There were no differences
between the three groups regarding age (24.3 +/- 2.6; 24.2 +/- 3.4
and 24 +/- 2.3 years) or previous knowledge (29.3 +/- 3.4; 29.3 +/-
3.2 and 28.9 +/- 4.7 points in the multiple choice {[} MC] exam in
emergency medicine). Merely the gender distribution differed (8
female and 5 male students in the intervention and control group
vs. 3 males and 17 females in the test OSCE group). In the exam
OSCE, participants in the intervention group scored 233.4 +/- 6.3
points (mean +/- SD) compared to 223.8 +/- 9.2 points (p < 0.01)
in the control group. Cohen's effect size was d = 1.24. The
students of the test OSCE group scored 223.2 +/- 13.4 points.
Conclusions: Students who actively develop OSCE stations when
preparing for an emergency medicine OSCE achieve better exam
results.