May student examiners be reasonable substitute examiners for faculty in an undergraduate OSCE on medical emergencies?

OBJECTIVES: To compare the effect of student examiners (SE) to that of faculty examiners (FE) on examinee performance in an OSCE as well as on post-assessment evaluation in the area of emergency medicine management.

METHODS: An OSCE test-format (seven stations: Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS), Basic Life Support (BLS), Trauma-Management (TM), Pediatric-Emergencies (PE), Acute-Coronary-Syndrome (ACS), Airway-Management (AM), and Obstetrical-Emergencies (OE)) was administered to 207 medical students in their third year of training after they had received didactics in emergency medicine management. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the two simultaneously run tracks: either with SE (n = 110) or with FE (n = 98). Students were asked to rate each OSCE station and to provide their overall OSCE perception by means of a standardized questionnaire. The independent samples t-test was used and effect sizes were calculated (Cohens d).

RESULTS: Students achieved significantly higher scores for the OSCE stations "TM", "AM", and "OE" as well as "overall OSCE score" in the SE track, whereas the station score for "PE" was significantly higher for students in the FE track. Mostly small effect sizes were reported. In the post-assessment evaluation portion of the study, students gave significant higher ratings for the ACS station and "overall OSCE evaluation" in the FE track; also with small effect sizes.

CONCLUSION: It seems quite admissible and justified to encourage medical students to officiate as examiners in undergraduate emergency medicine OSCE formative testing, but not necessarily in summative assessment evaluations.