The cost of the objective structured clinical examination on an Italian nursing bachelor's degree course

The OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination) is considered the most valid and reliable method for assessing the clinical skills of students training for health professions, but its use is limited by the related high costs. We analyzed the cost retrospectively of using an OSCE designed for second-year students (2009) in our degree course, adopting the Reznick et al. guidelines (1993), which recommend assessing both high-end costs and low-end costs. The high-end costs adopting the OSCE amounted to (sic)145.23 per student, while the low-end costs were (sic)31.51 per student. Considering the economic crisis and the cost-containment measures applied also in nursing education, strategies for further reducing costs are discussed. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.