[Clinical competence evaluation using the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) in medical internship at UNAM].

Introduction: The Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) is a widely used measurement tool to assess clinical competence in the health sciences. There is little published evidence of its use in Mexican medical schools.

Objective: To assess clinical competence in medical students with an OSCE, before and after the Medical Internship.

Methods: Prospective cohort study, pre- post-test research design. The assessed population was medical students at UNAM Faculty of Medicine in Mexico in their Internship year. The instrument was an 18-stations OSCE, three stations per academic area of the Internship curriculum.

Results: We assessed the clinical competence of 278 students in a pretest OSCE when starting the Internship year, and tested them 10 months later with an equivalent post-test OSCE. The sample of students was 30.4% of the total Internship population. Test reliability with Cronbach's alpha was 0.62 in the pre-test and 0.64 in the post-test. The global mean score in the pretest OSCE was 55.6 ± 6.6 and in the post-test 63.2 ± 5.7 (p < 0.001), with a Cohen's d of 1.2.

Conclusions: The clinical competence of medical students measured with an OSCE is higher after the medical internship year. This difference suggests that the internship can influence the development of clinical competence in medical students.