Pharmaceutical microbiology in pharmacy education: Operational process of an objective structured practical examination (OSPE) in Universiti Teknologi MARA

Objective structured practical examinations (OSPEs) have been implemented as a standard practice in most medical and health science schools worldwide to assess competencies in laboratory skills. A practical examination would improve students’ understanding of the experiment they conduct and help build confidence and competency for future application. With the expanding roles of a pharmacist, it is important to strengthen students’ skill set during pharmacy education. This article reports the procedures and findings after conducting OSPE for the subject of pharmaceutical microbiology and parasitology in the Faculty of Pharmacy at Universiti Teknologi MARA for three years (2017-2019). There is a significant difference in OSPE performance between the years 2017, 2018, and 2019. The addition of OSPE, while does not significantly change the median marks, is able to better define the students’ performance and grade. The conclusion is that the students were able to adapt to the added examination and benefit from the experience.