title: Do primary health centres and hospitals contribute equally towards achievement of the transversal clinical competencies of medical students? Performance on the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) in competency acquisition.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The adaptation of the educational programmes of European faculties of medicine to the European Higher Education Area guidelines has focused curricula design on competence acquisition. Competencies are defined as the achievements of a predetermined level of efficacy in real-world scenarios. Our objective was to assess whether performance on a common competence evaluation test, the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE), resulted in different scores for second-year students after a practical medical training course took place in a primary health centre (PHC) or in a hospital.
  
  
  METHODS
  A descriptive study was conducted during the 2010-2014 academic year of the OSCE test scores obtained by all second-year students.
  
  
  METHODS
  Faculty of Medicine at the University of Lleida (Catalonia, Spain).
  
  
  METHODS
  We performed a correlation analysis between students who completed their practical medical training at the PHC and hospitals utilising Student's t-test for comparison of means.
  
  
  RESULTS
  423 students who completed internships at the PHC and at hospitals obtained OSCE mean scores of 7.32 (SD; IC) (0.82; 7.18-7.47) points and 7.17 (0.83; 6.07-7.26) points, respectively (p=0.07).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Second-year medical students acquired similar competency levels in the two analysed training scenarios. The two areas both serve their teaching purpose.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Medicine of Lleida, Spain. Electronic address: jorgesolergonzalez@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Jorge
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Soler-González
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Medicine of Lleida, Spain.
authors.forename: Miquel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Buti
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Medicine of Lleida, Spain.
authors.forename: Jordi
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Boada
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Medicine of Lleida, Spain.
authors.forename: Victoria
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Ayala
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Medicine of Lleida, Spain.
authors.forename: Eduard
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Peñascal
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Medicine of Lleida, Spain.
authors.forename: Toni
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Rodriguez
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D002983:Clinical Competence; D004521:Educational Measurement; D006801:Humans; D013030:Spain; D013337:Students, Medical
keywords: Atención Primaria; Competences; Competencias; Educación médica; Evaluación de competencias clínicas estructurada; Health science education; Innovación docente; Objective Structured Clinical Examination; Primary Care; Teaching innovation