• Azim Mirzazadeh, Behrouz Bavarian, Ali Labaf, Ali Afshari, Mohammad Nikoo, Zahra Sadat Meshkani, and Patricia Khashayar.
• Department of Internal Medicine, Imam Khomeini Hospital, Center for Educational Research in Medical Sciences (CERMS), Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
• Arch Med Sci. 2013 Apr 20; 9 (2): 309313309-13.

IntroductionThe inefficacy of clinical skill education during the clerkship has been reported in several studies. The present study was conducted to evaluate the competency of medical students in performing several clinical skills through an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE), aiming to evaluate the quality of the existing curriculum in the clerkship phase.Material And MethodsThe cross sectional study was conducted at the end of the clerkship period, before the students had entered the internship. The OSCE exam was conducted in the morning (2 different tracts) and in the evening (2 similar tracts) and 86 students participated in the exam. Each tract consisted of seven stations. The students' points in the stations assessing history taking and clinical skills were compared.ResultsThe students gained the highest points in the history taking stations, whereas the procedure stations accounted for the lowest points; there was a significant difference between these stations (p < 0.001). The female students achieved higher scores in the OSCE exam compared to males (p = 0.004).ConclusionsThe OSCE exam revealed the inefficacy of the current medical curriculum in teaching the required clinical skill to undergraduate medical students during the clerkship.

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