PURPOSE
The purpose of this study is to report the opinions of the students on the OSCE and how to improve this exam.
METHODS
135 students at Pusan National University School of Medicine were asked to perform the OSCE. Data were collected through a questionnaire (Cronbach's alpha = .965). Analysis was done using SPSS statistics program.
RESULTS
In summary, the students thought the content of the OSCE was all very important but practically, it was difficult to perform due to a lack of practice. Through this exam, thestudents said that they realized their insufficiencies, and they felt more motivated to learn. The BLS station scored very high in the 'validity of contents', 'validity of difficulty', 'validity of time limit', and 'fostering learning motivation'. The opinions of the students on the areas requiring improvement were: the control of information exchange among them, the connection with training, the establishment of a permanent training space, and increasing exposure to the exam.
CONCLUSION
The OSCE, now more than ever, definitely has an educating role in preparing physicians for clinical practice.

PURPOSE
The third year students at Gyeong-Sang National University College of Medicine were asked to perform objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) at the end of the 2004 academic year. In this article, we analysed the correlation among the scores of OSCE with those of Final Term Examination in Internal Medicine (FTE), Clerkship Performance in Internal Medicine (CP) and Case Conference Examination (CCE), which assess knowledge, skill and attitude, and problem solving ability in medicine, respectively. We also analyzed difficulty and discrimination indexes of the test questions or evaluation criteria, and assessed their objectivity. METHODS: 1) Relevance: the pearson correlation analysis was performed on the scores of 85 students from 6 OSCE stations, FTE, CP and CCE. 2) Analysis on the evaluation criteria: the difficulty and discrimination indexes of the 59 evaluation criteria were calculated. 3) Objectivity: in order to assess objectivity in the scores, the Student t-test was performed on the scores of students from 4 OSCE stations where there was a change in the examiners after the morning sessions and on the students from 2 OSCE stations that had no change of examiners. RESULTS: 1) Relevance: Correlation coefficients between the scores of OSCE and FTE, CP or CCE were 0.335, 0.326 and 0.421, respectively (p < 0.01). 2) Analysis on the evaluation criteria: difficulty indexes of the 59 criteria ranged from 0.15 to 0.98, and 43% of the criteria belonged to the acceptable range. Discrimination indexes ranged from -0.22 to 0.61, and 69% of the criteria were acceptable. 3) Objectivity: The student t-test showed significant differences between the scores of the morning and afternoon sessions in 2 of the 4 stations, where the examiners were changed in the afternoon (p < 0.01). CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that OSCE performed in 2004 may have relevance to a valid tool in assessing clinical competence of medical students in terms of knowledge, skill, attitude and problem solving ability. However, in order to reuse the test materials in the future, evaluation criteria need to be refined further based on difficulty and discrimination indexes, and measures to improve objectivity of examiners should also be studied.

PURPOSE
The standardized patient (SP) is a person carefully trained to represent a real patient case for consistent and accurate use in student performance evaluation and/or training, has added a very important dimension in OSCE. The purpose of this study is compared a well-trained professional SP (PSP) and a amateur SP (ASP) in OSCE.
METHODS
We surveyed 378 students apprentices and staffs involving OSCE of Daegu-Kyungbuk Consortium and analysed the validity between the PSP and ASP after OSCE. RESULTS: Of 92 total stations in which students were evaluated by staff evaluator, SP were used in 47 stations (48%). Of the 47 stations, professional SP 7 stations (16%). The questionnaires were made to know the effectiveness and realistics of SP. The results were different between station used PSP and ASP. Moreover, it was significantly different between the staffs and the students. The SP can offer advantages such as availability, adaptability and effectivity. If trained well, they also can provide positive effects to the students and the staffs. The PSP provides efficient and reliable opportunity to assess clinical skills in a safe situation without any harm to the real patients.
CONCLUSION
It is suggested that the use of SP is stimulating and challenging way of evaluating the OSCE. Also, It appeared to be financially and availably feasible if it commonly owned in the boundary of the land such Daegu-Kyungbuk Consortium.