Protecting the Integrity of the Virtual Objective Structured Clinical Examination

Objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) are a common approach to summative assessment of learner performance in Doctor of Pharmacy curricula. OSCEs involve student rotation through multiple standardized stations designed to assess performance on clinical tasks. OSCEs consist of both active and passive stations. In active stations, students interact with a standardized participant (SP) such as a patient, caregiver, or provider in order to complete the station. In passive stations, students are asked to complete a task which requires them to provide information or answer questions. In March 2020, the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (COVID-19) was declared a pandemic and shifted all, or a majority of face-to-face instruction to a remote platform. This challenged many pharmacy educators to either design new, virtual OSCEs to assess skills that were previously assessed face-to-face, or convert their existing OSCEs to a remote platform. Given this shift to remote instruction and assessment, the importance of maintaining integrity of the OSCE has been raised as a critical issue. Herein we discuss the approach by three colleges of pharmacy to maintain the integrity of the virtual OSCE. Strategies, opportunities and barriers to protecting the integrity of the virtual OSCE are also discussed.