Investigating the attitude of graduate psychiatrists towards objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) and conventional clinical interview examination

Objective: in the present study,we investigated the attitude of psychiatrists who graduated in 2002-2009 towards objective structured clinical examination (osce) and conventional clinical interview examination (individual patient assessment). method: we studied 134 psychiatrists graduated; half of whom were examined with conventional clinical interview and the others with osce. a questionnaire was prepared by a specialist workgroup to assess the participants' attitude towards the exams. the questionnaire was initially examined in a pilot study. the findings of the questionnaire were used to assess the graduates' attitude towards each examination,as well as to compare the examinations. results: the osce group indicated a significantly more positive attitude compared to the conventional group (p = 0.03). furthermore,the osce group believed the role of theoretical knowledge (p = 0.01) and pre-test practice (p = 0.03) to be significantly greater for success compared to the other group. the structure of osce was reported to be superior to conventional examination in terms of fairness and homogeneity (p = 0.004). first participation in exam (p = 0.04) and ultimate success in the exam (p = 0.009) were predictors of graduates' attitude. conclusion: based on examinees 'attitudes,osce may be a more appropriate choice for graduation examinations of psychiatry compared to the conventional clinical interview examination.