Real-Time Standardized Participant Grading of an Objective Structured Clinical Examination
Objectives. To determine the reliability of using standardized participant (SP) actors as real-time graders for an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE). Methods. All students enrolled in Therapeutics I participated in a 3-station OSCE. Faculty and SP actors graded student performance in real time using a dichotomous performance checklist. Standard setting for the OSCE was done using the borderline method. Inter-rater reliability between the faculty members and SP was determined. Results. Fifty-one students completed the morning examination and 30 completed the afternoon examination. The inter-rater reliability between the faculty members and SPs were 0.84, 0.88, and 0.93 for the morning examination and 0.90, 0.92, and 0.98 for the afternoon examination. The standard determined by faculty members and SPs for the morning examination was 66.9% and 63.8%, and for the afternoon examination was 72.6% and 73.1%, respectively. Conclusions. These data support the use of SP actors as graders for compreh...