Student perceptions of a sequential objective structured clinical examination

Background Well-designed objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) are reliable and valid, but expensive. The sequential OSCE (sOSCE) aims to balance robustness with affordability. In a sOSCE all students undertake a screening test (Day 1), with ‘failing’ or ‘borderline’ candidates sitting a second examination (Day 2). Current research has focused on psychometric properties of the sOSCE. Our aim was to examine the acceptability of the sOSCE, by identifying students’ views.