Is short-term remediation after OSCE failure sustained? A retrospective analysis of the longitudinal attainment of underperforming students in OSCE assessments

Background

Significant improvements in the delivery of criterion based assessment techniques have improved confidence in standard setting and assessment quality. However, for underperforming students, a lack of evidence about longitudinal performance of this group poses dilemmas to educators when making decisions about the timing and nature of remediation.

Aims

To investigate the longitudinal performance of the UK undergraduate medical degree students, with a particular focus on comparing the poorly performing students (i.e. those with borderline or failing grades) with the main cohort of students.

Method

Over a five year period, 3200 student OSCE assessments from a single medical school consisting were investigated. A poorly performing subgroup of 125 students was identified and their longitudinal performance in the final three years of the undergraduate medical degree was analysed.

Results

The relative performance of this student group declines across serial OSCEs, despite current methods of ‘remediation and re-test’.

Conclusions

This analysis demonstrates that typically students in the poorly performing subgroup achieve only short term success with traditional remediation and re-test models, and critically show an absence of longitudinal improvement. There is a clear need for institutions to develop profiling models that can help identify this student group and develop effective, research led models of remediation.