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Background: The observed structured clinical examination (OSCE) is an important tool to assess clinical competencies; however, there are no reported palliative care OSCEs for medical student assessment., Objective: We aimed to develop, implement, and evaluate the characteristics of a palliative care OSCE for fourth-year medical students., Methods: We created a representative case and a checklist of 14 history items from three core palliative care competency domains. Subjects were fourth-year medical students who had completed our school's longitudinal palliative care curriculum. Measurements were students' scores compiled from the standardized patient's (SP) tally of the checklist results. We determined inter-rater reliability between the SP and a remote observer. Measurements included the difficulty and discrimination index, internal consistency reliability, factor analysis, and relationships between palliative care scores and composite seven station OSCE scores., Results: In the implementation year, 95 students scored an average of 74% (standard deviation [SD] = 13%) on the 14 history items. There was 95% agreement in ratings on items between the SP and the remote observer. The Cronbach's alpha was 0.53, demonstrating moderate internal consistency. The palliative care scores correlated with overall OSCE communication scores (R = 0.29, p = 0.01) and history scores (R = 0.61, p = 0.01)., Conclusions: A new OSCE to assess palliative care competencies was feasible to implement with high inter-rater reliability, evidence supporting validity, and moderate internal consistency. We believe this OSCE would prove useful to assess students' primary palliative care competency and to evaluate curricula in palliative care.

Background: To meet the complex needs of patients with serious illness, health professional students require education in basics aspects of palliative care, including how to work collaboratively on an interprofessional team., Objectives: An educational program was created, implemented, and evaluated with students in medicine, nursing, chaplaincy, and social work. Five learning objectives emphasized spiritual, cultural, and interprofessional aspects of palliative care., Design: The program blended two sequential components: an online interactive, case-based learning module, and a live, dynamic simulation workshop., Measurements: Content analysis was used to analyze students' free-text responses to four reflections in the online case, as well as open-ended questions on students' postworkshop questionnaires, which were also analyzed quantitatively., Results: Analysis of 217 students' free-text responses indicated that students of all professions recognized important issues beyond their own discipline, the roles of other professionals, and the value of team collaboration. Quantitative analysis of 309 questionnaires indicated that students of all professions perceived that the program met its five learning objectives (mean response values>4 on a 5-point Likert scale), and highly rated the program and its two components for both educational quality and usefulness for future professional work (mean response values approximately>4)., Conclusions: This innovative interprofessional educational program combines online learning with live interactive simulation to teach professionally diverse students spiritual, cultural, and interprofessional aspects of palliative care. Despite the challenge of balanced professional representation, this innovative interprofessional educational program met its learning objectives, and may be transferable for use in other educational settings.