Evaluating Students and Educators’ Satisfaction with Objective Structured Clinical Examinations in Health Sciences Education: Evidence from Tunisia

Background

Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) have played an important role in healthcare education for several decades, predominantly in affluent regions.1,2 The satisfaction with OSCEs in economically constrained environments like Tunisia still needs to be studied. This research investigates the satisfaction levels of students and educators with OSCEs in Tunisian health sciences education, aiming to offer insights into other low-resource settings.

Methods

A cross-sectional study at the School of Health Sciences, Sousse, Tunisia, used a five?point Likert scale survey on four themes (Table 1). Reliability and validity were assessed through Cronbach’s Alpha and Aiken V Content Validity Coefficient (CVC).2 Satisfaction scores from students and educators were collated. The Spearman assessed the relationship between pairs of OSCE themes. Kruskal-Wallis, adjusted with post-hoc tests, assessed satisfaction themes’ scores differences across the specialities of the paramedicine students.

Results

128 students and 31 health sciences educators, 100% of their respective populations, participated. Overall satisfaction with the OSCE theme averaged 3.3 for students and 3.8 for professors (5=Strongly agree) (Figure 1). Cronbach’s Alpha was 0.96 and 0.83 for students and educators, with CVCs of 0.71 and 0.82. For the “Particularity” (Distinctiveness) theme, Spearman’s Rho showed positive correlations, especially with “Efficiency”. The distinctiveness of OSCE appeared to influence its perceived efficiency. The analysis identified significant satisfaction score variations across “Paramedicine_Students_specialities”.

Conclusion

In a Tunisian context, students and educators displayed high levels of satisfaction with the distinctiveness and efficiency of the OSCEs in health sciences training. Variability in satisfaction among different student classes underscores the need to tailor OSCE components for diverse student groups, especially in resource-limited settings. This highlights the importance of adaptability in educational assessments and reinforces the value of context-specific feedback for continual improvement. As OSCEs expand in global application, recognising and addressing these variances becomes essential for maintaining educational integrity and optimising students’ learning outcomes.