Evaluation of moral competency using standardized patient: Presenting an experience

In this study we discuss our experience of including an ethics objective structured clinical examination (osce) station in endocrinology board exam. one osce station on truth telling was developed and a standardized patient was trained for role playing in this station. based on a pilot study,the evaluation checklist got modified. then the finalized station added into the osce phase of endocrinology board exam. based on this experience,adding ethics station in board exams is practical and reasonable. since osce method could evaluate students' ethical decision making and communication skill it could be used in combination with other kinds of evaluation in assessing ethics competency of graduates. using this method could push the ethics learning approach toward more practical and skill based ones. © 2010 fariba asghari and bagher larijani; licensee tehran univ. med. sci.