Piloting the new specialist training year 1 (ST1) interview process – using the OSCE

Sir,

We wish to bring to the attention of your readership our recent experience of piloting the new specialist training year 1 (ST1) interview process in obstetrics and gynaecology in the Mersey Region in the UK. The interview was made up of four Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) stations each of 10 minutes’ duration with 5 minutes between stations. This was to allow rotation of the candidates and scoring by the assessors. There were two assessors at each station who used a pre-formatted score card consisting of 20–25 points for each of the exercises. The stations were:

• a portfolio assessment;

• basic life support;

• breaking bad news; and

• clinical scenario.

There was one supernumerary examiner who acted as chairman and rotated around the four stations. The candidates were marked for each of the individual stations and for each station the candidates were ranked overall 1–20. The results were summated and the top 11 candidates were offered posts pending references.

All the examiners had previously taken part in regional specialist registrar (SpR) interviews in the past. The general consensus amongst them was that the OSCE type interview was more consistent in assessing the candidates and furthermore it was easier for the examiners.

Although when appointing trainees hopefully the ‘10 minute interview’ is beginning to be replaced by a new multi-source assessment processes it will be important in the future to identify which items are most consistent at identifying successful candidates. Interestingly, in our experience two stations predicted the overall ranking of the candidates: breaking bad news and basic life support. Whether the OSCE interview will pick out the ‘best candidates’ is yet to be seen and determining robust and reliable predictors of success at achieving competencies once the trainee is in post is an area for further research.