The OSCE: A new challenge to the evaluation system in Korea

Introduced in Korea in 1994, the number of medical schools using Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) and standardized patients (SPs) has been steadily increasing. Although OSCE is accepted as an effective teaching and evaluation tool in Korea, many challenges in applying OSCE remain. These problems stem mainly from differences in the educational environment and infrastructure in medical schools between different countries. To reduce trial and error cost inefficiencies and to help accelerate the adaptation process, sharing experiences at all levels of applying OSCE to non-Western settings would be valuable. The authors describe how and to what extent the OSCE has been applied to the Korean medical education system. Additionally, the elements that should be in place for OSCE to successfully transform the national licensure examination into a high stakes examination are described.