• Lakeman P
• Murdock M
• Norkus S

• Clinical Competence / standards
• Education, Chiropractic
• Educational Measurement / methods
• Open Access Document

Introduction: Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) are the most prevalent method of practical exams assessing clinical skills in health-related education. The largest challenge OSCEs present is they are time-consuming for instructors to create and prepare. Excel Randomized Generated OSCEs (ERGOs) is our innovation using Excel-based computer-generated randomized task sheets instead of the traditional instructor-created testing scenarios.

Methods: ERGOs were created and used by an instructor for OSCEs in a chiropractic college. A survey was then conducted of the class and creator of ERGOs, and evaluated for differences.

Results: For the instructor, ERGOs saved time in both the creation of the randomized practical exams and the 2 consecutive uses of ERGOs for the class.

Discussion: Other studies using Excel focused on randomization, extraction, and data analysis. Our study used Excel for OSCE randomization, generation, pairing and updating. We feel this use of Excel will allow faculty to maximize their time since this is a readily available resource to most college instructors in the United States. The main limitation is that this was a single case study.

Conclusion: ERGOs helped decrease instructor time preparing technique OSCEs initially and subsequent iterations. Using technology to save time and streamline the process of creating OSCEs is a benefit most instructors would welcome.

Author keywords: Medical Education; Chiropractic; Objective Structured Clinical Examinations

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