What skills can be adequately tested by binary checklists?
The marking schedule is not binary. The schedule is a 5-point scale as used in other College clinical examinations. OSCEs are used in the General Medical Council Professional Language and Assessment Board (PLAB) examinations and have been introduced by the Royal College of Physicians, among others. There is no reason to think that there is any problem with marking OSCEs. OSCEs are objectively marked. This means that the weighting of particular objectives within each OSCE station is determined before the examination and the examiner s task is to award marks for each objective as listed on the mark sheet. Whether the candidate passes or not is determined by his or her performance on these objectives and by the relative weighting of these objectives. How can key psychiatric skills such as empathy and building rapport with patients be assessed? All the OSCE stations in the College examinations will have communication skills as an objective. In practice it is not difficult to identify the c
