Assessment of Antimicrobial Stewardship through objective structured clinical examination in pharmacy education

OBJECTIVES: To describe the implementation and assess whether an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) is a viable assessment tool for testing Antimicrobial Stewardship (AMS) principles.

METHODS: A three-station OSCE set in a hospital and community pharmacy was designed and mapped to the World Health Organisation's AMS intervention practical guide. This OSCE comprised 39 unique cases and was implemented across two campuses (Malaysia and Australia) at one institute. Stations were 8 min long and consisted of problem-solving and applying AMS principles to drug therapy management (Station 1), counselling on key antimicrobials (Station 2) or managing infectious diseases in primary care (Station 3). Primary outcome measure to assess viability was the proportion of students who were able to pass each case.

KEY FINDINGS: Other than three cases with pass rates of 50, 52.8 and 66. 7%, all cases had pass rates of 75% or more. Students were most confident with referral to medical practitioner cases and switching from intravenous to oral or empirical to directed therapy.

CONCLUSIONS: An AMS-based OSCE is a viable assessment tool in pharmacy education. Further research should explore whether similar assessments can help improve students' confidence at recognising opportunities for AMS intervention in the workplace.