title: Introduction of craniomaxillofacial surgery as a component of medical student training in general surgery.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  This study provides an overview of the objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) in concept, determination of task difficulty, execution, and evaluation by students and examiners.
  
  
  METHODS
  During a 4-semester study period, 507 medical students completed a practical skills training (PST) course and subsequently participated in a 16-station OSCE, which contained 2 craniomaxillofacial surgical (CMS) stations covering the following key tasks: craniofacial examination and facial trauma fracture management. The students were rated using dedicated checklists. The students subjectively evaluated the PST and the OSCE using anonymous evaluation forms.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Students rated the PST and OSCE as "very positive." The CMS OSCE stations were rated as having good task difficulty (74.05 ± 1.78% average task fulfilment for the examination and 74.45 ± 3.40% for the management station). With no changes to the examination station, no significant improvement of performance occurred over the entire investigation period (P = .787). In contrast, students improved slightly at the management station (P = .308). The CMS stations showed high selectivity and were representative in the overall context of the OSCE; improvement of selectivity increased from 0.259 ± 0.088 to 0.465 ± 0.109.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  CMS was successfully implemented in the general surgical training for medical students, with an initial PST and a final OSCE concordant with the literature. The CMS implementation effectively trained and fairly evaluated clinical skills. Although an OSCE consumes time and resources, this addition proved feasible and valuable, even with large numbers of students, and students expressed a high level of satisfaction with the training.
authors.affiliation: Consultant, Department of Oral, Craniomaxillofacial, and Facial Plastic Surgery, Goethe University Medical Center Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany.
authors.forename: Florian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Schuebel
authors.affiliation: Resident, Department of Oral, Craniomaxillofacial, and Facial Plastic Surgery, Goethe University Medical Center Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany. Electronic address: shoefer@em.uni-frankfurt.de.
authors.forename: Sebastian H
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Höfer
authors.affiliation: Resident, Department of Trauma, Hand, and Reconstructive Surgery, Goethe University Medical Center Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany.
authors.forename: Miriam
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rüsseler
authors.affiliation: Professor, Department of Trauma, Hand, and Reconstructive Surgery, Goethe University Medical Center Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany.
authors.forename: Felix
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Walcher
authors.affiliation: Professor and Chair, Department of Oral, Craniomaxillofacial, and Facial Plastic Surgery, Goethe University Medical Center Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany.
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sader
authors.affiliation: Professor and Vice-Chair, Department of Oral, Craniomaxillofacial, and Facial Plastic Surgery, Goethe University Medical Center Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany.
authors.forename: Constantin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Landes
mesh_terms: D003479:Curriculum; D004501:Education, Medical / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006801:Humans; D012886:Skull / Q000601:surgery*; D013515:Surgery, Oral / Q000193:education*