Objective structure Examination (OSCE) in Physiotherapy: What is the difference between communication competence and therapeutic climate?

Abstract
Background: The Objective Structured Examination (OSCE) is an examination tool which is used to assess clinical skills in medicine. This study is in the area of evaluation of physiotherapy students` skills and applies data from Bern University of Applied Science. The bachelor degree program in physiotherapy utilized OSCE’s to evaluate clinical competence of students.
Assessing clinical competences of physiotherapy students are determined by global criteria such as communication, therapeutic climate, technical skills and clinical decision-making ability. In the first semester, the OSCE consists of eight stations that each last eight minutes. The OSCE in the fifth semester consists of two short time stations (eight minutes each) and three long time stations (16 minutes each). Hodges and McIlroy concluded that global ratings are an important element of OSCE measurement and can have good psychometric properties. However, OSCE researchers should clearly describe the type of global ratings they use. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine if there are differences in the rating between communication competence and therapeutic climate. These results would provide valid judgments about clinical competences of physiotherapy students.
Methods: This study investigated two selected criteria of communication and therapeutic climate of every single station of the eight stations in the first semester and the five stations in the fifth semester of the OSCE circle at Bern University in 2015. It included 50 students from the 1th Semester and 49 students from the 5th semester. The criteria of communications were rated by the examiner and the criteria of therapeutic climate by a standardized patient. Data was analyzed by the means of t-test and the SPSS program (Version 2015).
Results: No differences were found in the ratings of the therapeutic climate and the communicative competences for physiotherapy students in the first semester on 8 stations (p=0.16 to p=.956) and in the 5th Semester (p=0.34 to p= 0.485).
Conclusion: This study could not find differences in the ratings between therapeutic climate and communication. Therefore, the assessment criteria of communication and therapeutic climate could be used as valid judgments to determine clinical competencies of physiotherapy students.
However, the study did not provide results on the difference between the short and long stations. We assume that in short stations the student cannot establish a good relationship with standardized patients. Further research is suggested to be focused on the data collected during the long stations.