Table 1.

Number of questions devoted to each clinical diagnosis skill and OSCE station

			CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS SKILLS
OSCE STATIONS	Format	Content	Patient Interaction	Physical Examination Technic	Indentification of Abnormality	History-taking	Patient Presentation	Physical Examination Knowl	Differential Diagnosis	TOTAL2	No. of skills per station3
Abdominal Pain	Role play	History, review of systems Pain and differential diagnosis of subacute abdominal pain	8			27			11	46	2
Alcohol / Abdominal Examination	Human model	Examining abdomen of normal Abdominal individual, stating potential Examination findings in an alcoholic patient		18				9		27	2
Arthritis1	Videotape	Describing and identifiying hand and forearm findings in osteo- and rheumatoid arthritis			11				5	16	2
Breast	Silicone model	Examination technique, and detecting 5 lumps of varying sizes		9	5					14	2
Calf Pain	Question and answer	Describing findings relevant and answer to differential diagnosis of calf pain						9	30	39	2
Ear	Model, 35 mm slides	Otoscopy, and identifying 35 mm slides normal, bulging, and perforated drums		3	8			5	1	17	4
Headache	Role play	History, review of systems and differential diagnosis for environmental cause of headache	1			26			10	37	2
Heart	CD-ROM	Describing and identifiying aortic stenosis and mitral regurgitation			13				2	15	2
Hemoptysis	Question and answer	History, review of systems, and answer differential diagnosis	5			13			12	30	2
Knee	Human model	Performing knee exam on normal individual and describing potential findings		12				14		26	2
Lung	Audiotape	Identifiying wheezes and rhonchi, describing associated findings			2			12		14	2
Mental Status	Role play	Probing at least 5 domains of cognitive and affective function		10				10		20	2
Presentation	Question and answer	Orally presenting the history and answer and differential diagnosis from abdominal pain station					33			33	1
Rectal / Prostate	Plastic model	Verbally identifying possible /Prostate rectal conditions, and tactily identifying prostate findings			2			11		13	2
Skin	35 mm slides	Describing and identifiying psoriasis, melanoma and basal cell epithelioma			20				3	23	2
Thyroid	Patient	Describing and performing the thyroid exam in a patient with findings		8	4					12	2
TOTAL No. % of questions			14 4%	60 16%	65 17%	66 17%	33 9%	70 18%	74 19%	3824

¹OSCE 1999 had one less question than OSCE 1997 and 1998. ² Mean number of questions per skill: 55 (range 14–74) ³Mean number of skills per station: 2.25 (range 1–4) ⁴Mean number of questions per station: 24 (range 12–46)