The Watched Structure Clinical Examination (WASCE) as a tool of assessment

Assessment of medical students' clinical competencies is still evolving. The aim of this study was to find out the effectiveness of a new tool of assessment to assess medical students at the end of clinical rotations. A new tool has been developed in the College of Medicine and Medical Sciences, Arabian Gulf University, Manama, Bahrain, called the Watched Structure Clinical Examination (WASCE). It was used at the end of the Family Medicine clinical rotation during the academic year 2000-2001 involving 62 final year students. The study found a significant statistical correlation between the students' results in the WASCE and their results in Doctor of Medicine final examination, which included the written examination, the patient encountered clinical examination and the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE). Watched Structured Clinical Examination can be a useful method of assessment for examining certain clinical skills, with an advantage over the OSCE in that it is less time consuming, more cost effective, requires less supervising staff to conduct the examination and, more importantly, it is less stressful to the students.