OSCEr vs ECE Tracker

OSCEr (OSCE-review) is a freely-accessible, self-paced app made for medical students – by students – to help learn clinical skills and practice for OSCEs. This comprehensive app integrates diverse resources (like the Essentials of Clinical Examination Handbook and clinicalskillstoronto.com) and features checklists to practice history-taking, physical exams, or combined history and physicals – all while keeping track of progress. Users can focus on a body-system of interest, within which they can choose a specific assessment to either practice or test themselves under timed conditions (OSCE style), with or without hints or explanations. As each exam is completed, areas of competency and those needing further practice are highlighted, enabling a targeted approach to study and helping to make learning clinical skills both more efficient and enjoyable. Instructions: 1. Find an exam: • Select an organ from the main page (e.g. Neurology), use the search-bar to find an exam directly or use the ‘Quick Test’ button to do a random test. • If an organ-system is chosen, see all exam checklists belonging to that category. • If attempted before in ‘test’ mode, a progress-bar is shown next to the exam name with the average score achieved over all attempts. 2. Customize test/practice options: • Select a checklist (e.g. Headache) to see options before practicing/testing • Choose whether to be in test-mode (timed/scored vs. practice-mode) or show hints (explanations for each point). • Choose to do a history, physical, or combined history/physical checklist depending on the exam. • See details about previous test attempts, including number of attempts, score of last attempt, and average score of all attempts. • Select ‘Detailed Progress’ to see a point-by-point breakdown of previous attempts and a list of scores/times of all attempts. 3. Practice/Test an exam: • Choose ‘Start Test or Practice’ to begin the test/practice checklist • For each point (e.g. ‘Patient’s general appearance’) select done correctly (solid circle), with omissions (half circle) or incomplete (empty circle). • Once finished, score and time data are saved for progress tracking and later review. Acknowledgements: App Design Team: • Team Leader: Arjun Balachandar • Programmers: Ahmad Alhashemi (iOS), Zubair Baig (Android) • Designers: Matan Berson, Sonia Seto • Content Development: Adrian Cozma, Kota Talla ECEH Executive Team: • Yuhao Shi, Brandon Tang, Zahra Sohani, Florentina Teoderascu Checklist authors – Clinical Skills Toronto: • Adrian Cozma (checklist leader), Mathew Patenaude, Josephine DAbbondanza, Arti Dhoot, Emily Patterson, Preeni Rathuge, Fady Sedarous, Erene Stergiopoulos, Kazim Giby, Cecilia Alvarez-Veronesi, Ahmed Zaki, Joel Gupta, Groonie Tang

The Essential Clinical Experiences Tracker (ECE Tracker) is used to monitor the core experiences that must be completed by every clerk during each clerkship rotation in the McMaster Undergraduate MD Program. It helps the MD Program ensure that we are providing a good breadth of clinical experiences for each trainee throughout the clerkship. Each experience listed in the Tracker has been assigned a specific role and patient type as defined by each clerkship. It is possible for a single experience to be met in more than one clerkship, but if the role or patient type requirements differ between clerkships, the experience may have to be completed again in subsequent clerkships. Experiences can be classified into three major categories: primary presentations, procedures and professional competencies. The list of presentations can be filtered by these categories. Experiences can be logged on the fly, or batch entered prior to the mid-rotation or end-of-rotation deadlines. We encourage you to log them at the time, as some rotations and supervisors like to review the experiences for formative educational conversations. Additional features include the ability to ‘quick add’ an experience, or edit the details of an encounter. Some rotations may also include additional probing questions or resources related to their encounters. Encounters can be entered via the native app, or through the medportal curriculum management system’s web interface. You can also check your ECE completion statistics through the app or medportal. If you are having trouble seeing all of the required clinical experiences for a clerkship rotation, please check in with your supervisor or site coordinator, to ensure that they help you to find suitable clinical learning opportunities to fulfill your objectives.