Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) in assessing pharmacy students' competence of asthma management in English and Arabic languages

Introduction: Tools to assess knowledge, communication and clinical skill of pharmacy students providing linguistically competent patient care are needed. OSCE represents a well-established tool. Objective: To develop an OSCE assessment of student skill in asthma management in English and Arabic, and to compare students' performance in the OSCE to traditional assessments. Methods: A blueprint was constructed to outline competencies, objectives, case scenarios, evaluations and logistics during OSCE assessments. Results: All 120 enrolled students participated. Students achieved better average scores in OSCE assessments (74.1%) than end of semester final examination (68.6%) and overall course score (72.9%). Overall, students did better in communication-type questions and general assessments rather than individualised patient assessment. Students evaluated their experience and were mostly satisfied. Conclusions: An OSCE assessment of students' competence in asthma management administered in English and Arabic was introduced successfully. The assessment raised awareness towards introduction of Arabic language content to the curriculum.