traditional evaluation methods ( tem ) , such as oral viva , written assignment , multiple choice questions , and clinical observational reports , are often used in the assessment of medical students . these tem systems have poor reliability and validity in terms of practicality . on the other hand , osce has been found to better assess clinical and cognitive skills of graduate medical students . the conventional clinical and practical examination osce is a modern type of examination often used in health sciences ( e.g. , medicine , physical therapy , nursing , pharmacy , etc . ) to test clinical skill performance such as communication , clinical examination , medical procedures or prescription , and exercise prescription . the objectives of the study were to assess the skills of final year b. sc . nursing students in providing antenatal care by osce and tem , and to get opinion of evaluators and final year b. sc . an evaluative - comparative research was conducted by adapting posttest only design among 37 final year b. sc . tools used for data collection were an observational checklist regarding antenatal care ( anc ) and an opinionnaire on the usefulness of osce and tem . a pilot study was conducted and the study was found to be feasible . to evaluate participants at different osce stations and tem , eight clinical instructors ( cis ) all the cis and students were briefed regarding anc , and blueprint of tem and osce methodology was explained . there was a 20-day gap in the assessment of skills between tem and osce on the basis of memory curve . the aim of the study was explained to the students and a written informed consent was obtained . the aim of the study was explained to the students and a written informed consent was obtained . the majority of participants 32 ( 86.5% ) scored high in skills when evaluated by osce than tem . the interesting fact which was observed was that none of the participants scored less than 50 when evaluated by osce , whereas mostly [ 24 ( 64.86% ) ] members scored below 50 with tem ( maximum possible score was 75 ) . the means ( sd ) of osce and tem skills scores were 65.43 ( 3.43 ) and 46.02 ( 7.57 ) against the maximum possible scores of 75 and 75 for osce and tem . the skills scores evaluated by osce and tem was found significant [ t ( cal ) = 15.77 at 0.001 level of significance ] [ table 1 ] . difference in clinical skills score assessed by osce and tem ( n=37 ) the results regarding the opinion of nursing students showed that both were in favor of osce than tem as the method of clinical skills evaluation , which was significant at 0.001 level ( mcnemar 's test ) , except item no . 7 and 9 [ table 2 ] . opinion of nursing students on usefulness of tem and osce ( n=37 ) data regarding opinion on the usefulness of tem and osce by evaluators revealed that there was 100% agreement toward the usefulness of osce as an evaluation method in items 7 and 10 , whereas in tem agreement was only 12.5% and 75% , respectively [ table 3 ] . the present study aimed to compare osce and tem in assessing the skills of nursing students and to obtain opinion about osce and tem from participants and evaluators of osce . the skills scores evaluated by osce were significantly better than that of the tem skills scores [ paired ( 36 ) = 15.770 at 0.001 level ] . similar findings have shown that the experimental group had a greater improvement in performance evaluated by osce than the control group at 13.43% compared with 6.76% ( p < 0.05 ) . it can be concluded that the difference of mean observed was the true difference , and that the osce method is effective than tem as an evaluation method . it was noted that the evaluators and nursing students were in favor of osce as an evaluation method than tem , which was found to be significant at 0.001 level , except item numbers 7 and 9 by the nursing students . the findings of the present study concluded that the skills of final year b. sc nursing students evaluated by osce was higher than the score of tem . the study findings point toward the significance of self - directed and student - centered innovative evaluation methods in nursing education .
introduction : nurses are trained with specific clinical skills , and objective structured clinical examination ( osce ) could be a better approach to assess clinical skills of nursing students.materials and methods : a comparative study was conducted by observational checklist regarding antenatal care and opinionnaire on the usefulness of osce and tradition evaluation method ( tem ) was used to assess the clinical skills and to get opinion.results:the mean score of osce was more than tem and the difference was statistically significant ( p < 0.001 ) . 
 the opinion of students regarding the usefulness of osce was higher than tem.conclusions:the study concluded that implementing osce will overweigh the advantages of the tem .