Evaluation Station in APIE stations NMC OSCE 2024

Evaluation is another silent station in your OSCE – NMC Test of Competence Part 2 exam. Time limit for completing evaluation is now 8 minutes. You don’t need to draft a transfer of care letter for your patient during this time as before. This session is a verbal session now where you hand over your patient with your findings using SBAR technique. You will get all the papers you have completed in your Assessment, Planning and Implementation in this stage.

Evaluation Station in APIE Stations of NMC OSCE

You will be getting your Assessment Chart, Implementation Drug Chart as well as your Planning Station Nursing Care plans in this station. You just need to put in the data from these papers into the evaluation paper template (only to help you with your SBAR handover). In this station,
you will write notes about a transfer/discharge or other form of evaluation, such as a situation, background, assessment, recommendation (SBAR), and you will then be required to provide a verbal handover to the assessor.\

Make sure that you familiarize yourself with the template provided on the test
centre’s learning platform. In this station, you should avoid using unfamiliar abbreviations that are not universally recognized. You will be assessed only on the verbal handover (not on your notes).

Tip: Ensure that you are familiar with observation charts such as NEWS and the Glasgow coma score.

Situation

Introduces self and the clinical setting.

Make note of patient’s name, hospital number, date of birth and location.

You need to state the reason for handover (where relevant)

Background

Jot down the dates of admission/visit/reason for inital admission to specialist team and diagnosis

Note down medical history and relevant past/present medications

Note details of current events and findings from your assessment.

Assessment

Note down most recent observation, any findings from assessments undertaken and what changes have occured

Note down main nursing needs identified

Note down nursing and medical interventions completed

Highlight areas of concerns.

Recommendation

Note down what is required of the person taking the handover and propose a realistic plan of action

Important – This station requires you to verbally handover the patient to the receiving staff (examiner). You do not essentially required to jot down all the points, if you can remember. Its advised to make a note from the documents provided by the examiner.

What really matters?

You need to make sure that,

– Your verbal communication is clear and appropriate

– You should have a systematic and structured approach taken to handover the patient

Pitfalls in Evaluation station

You can fail in the evaluation station, if

– the candidate fails to acknowledge or record the main care needs of the patient

– the candidate openly displays judgemental behaviour about a patient’s personal
characteristics (e.g., sexuality), belief/cultural/lifestyle preferences.

– candidate fails to clearly and accurately communicate with the healthcare
professional when handing care of the patient over.

Conclusion

Evaluation station is the simplest of all APIE Stations in NMC OSCE. This station has changed from the previous OSCE. This station was a silent station and you needed to write down under different headings in a NMC evaluation template. Now this station is only a verbal session where you need to hand over the patient using SBAR technique. You need to verbally handover everything you have assessed, recorded, administered as well as planned during other stations.

Sample Evaluation Sheet used in OSCE