High-Fidelity Virtual Objective Structured Clinical Examinations with Standardized Patients in Nursing Students: An Innovative Proposal during the COVID-19 Pandemic

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first_pagesettingsOrder Article Reprints Open AccessArticle High-Fidelity Virtual Objective Structured Clinical Examinations with Standardized Patients in Nursing Students: An Innovative Proposal during the COVID-19 Pandemic by Oscar Arrogante 1,*ORCID,Eva María López-Torre 1,Laura Carrión-García 1,Alberto Polo 1 andDiana Jiménez-Rodríguez 2ORCID 1 Fundación San Juan de Dios, Centro de Ciencias de la Salud San Rafael, Universidad de Nebrija, Paseo de La Habana, 70, 28036 Madrid, Spain 2 Departamento de Enfermería, Fisioterapia y Medicina, Universidad de Almería, 04120 Almería, Spain * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Healthcare 2021, 9(3), 355; https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare9030355 Submission received: 22 February 2021 / Revised: 11 March 2021 / Accepted: 17 March 2021 / Published: 20 March 2021 (This article belongs to the Collection Clinical Simulation in Health Sciences) Downloadkeyboard_arrow_down Versions Notes Abstract In response to the cancellation of in-person objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) prompted by confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we designed a solution to adapt our traditional OSCEs to this new reality in nursing education. We implemented an innovative teaching proposal based on high-fidelity virtual OSCEs with standardized patients. The purposes of our study were to describe this innovative teaching proposal and compare nursing competence acquisition in final year nursing students through virtual and in-person OSCE modalities. The study included 234 undergraduate students: 123 students were assessed through high-fidelity virtual OSCEs during May 2020, whereas 111 students were assessed through in-person OSCEs during May 2019. The structure of OSCEs, including its stations, clinical simulated scenarios, and checklists, was the same in both OSCE modalities. The effect size of the differences among the competence categories of checklists, including their total scores, was small. Regarding our virtual OSCEs was similarly successful to in-person OSCEs, this online format was found to be useful, feasible, and cost-saving when in-person OSCE was not possible. Therefore, high-fidelity virtual OSCEs with standardized patients could be considered as another choice of OSCE not only in the current COVID-19 pandemic but could also be extended to normal situations, even post-pandemic.