Structured Oral Examination as an Assessment Tool for Third Year Indian MBBS Undergraduates in Community Medicine

Introduction: Traditional viva are useful in assessing depth of knowledge and overall communication skill of student but demerits are many such as unequal time distribution for viva, gender bias, non uniformity, examiner's mood and so on. In present study we structured oral examination as an assessment tool for third year MBBS undergraduates in community Medicine and evaluating the process by taking student's as well as faculty's feedback to minimize biases. Material and Methods: Permission from Dean as well as head of department was taken. A batch of 26 students was randomly selected and enrolled in to study after informed consent. Four faculty members were randomly divided in two groups. Faculty members in structured oral examination group were sensitized and trained about it. Each student has undergone same set of questionnaire consisting of simple recall and applied questions. All the students were simultaneously assessed with traditional and structured oral examination without intermixing. Feedback in the form of questionnaire as per Likert's scale was collected for both type of viva and from students and faculties. Appropriate statistical analysis was done. Results: Analysis depicted that students were overall satisfied with the structured oral examination and felt it better than the traditional viva. Statistically significant differences (p = 0.0001) were observed in terms of uniformity of questions asked, stress, time allotment, topic coverage etc. Faculty also expressed that structured oral examinations are better in terms of reducing bias, minimising luck factor and uniformity of questions.