Aplicación del Examen Clínico Objetivo Estructurado (OSCE) en la evaluación final del internado de pediatría en dos escuelas de medicina

background: the objective structured clinical examination (osce) has become a respected and widely used tool for the assessment of clinical competence in medical education. aim: to describe the first experience of an osce as a summative assessment in undergraduate pediatric internship, in two universities. material and methods: the osce was structured by a committee of faculty members of the 5 campi of university of chile and i campus of the catholic university. a 21 station osce was administered simultaneously to 124 pediatric interns (university of chile =104, catholic university=20), in 3 centers. a total of 50 faculty members participated in the examination. the osce consisted of 20 clinical problems, including videotape recordings, photographs, x-rays and laboratory exams, phantoms and 7 simulated standardized parents. results: the average total osce score was 67.3% (range: 84.5%-43.5%). the maximum theoretic score was achieved in 19 stations. a significant correlation between station and total score, was found for 18 of the 20 clinical problems. conclusions: the experience of using osce has been a success. the osce was an adequate procedure to assess a large number of interns simultaneously and it allowed us to measure the main objectives in all domains and a wide range of clinical competence of pediatric internship programs (rev méd chile 2002; 130: 817-824).