Experience of Conducting Objective Structured Clinical Evaluation (OSCE) in Malawi

In Malawi various nursing educational institutions have increased the enrollment of nursing stu-dents in order to respond to the rampant nursing shortage prevalent in the Malawian clinical set-tings. With this increase in intake, nurse educators are met with so many questions as to whether the nurses being trained are competent and fit for practice. To ensure that these nurses have ap-propriate competences, Objective Structured Clinical Evaluation (OSCE) has been embraced as a key strategy to evaluate student's competence. The paper describes the lessons learnt from con-ducting OSCE to undergraduate student nurses at Kamuzu College of Nursing in Malawi. The paper considers the background and context of the school, the preparation of students, the formulation of OSCE tasks, recruitment of examiner and simulated patients and the evaluation of the OSCE. The paper concludes that OSCE can be a worthwhile valid strategy of teaching and assessing nursing students as long as it is properly designed. Nonetheless, profound commitment of all stakeholders involved is very vital.