Reliability and validity testing of an evidence-based medicine OSCE station.

The six competencies of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education include the lifelong learning skills of evidence-based medicine (EBM)/information mastery. We developed and tested an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) station that would measure these skills in family medicine residents. This EBM OSCE station is a 30-minute station within a regular OSCE exam. It uses an 8-point checklist and global measure and has good psychometric properties, including construct validity, interrater reliability (correlation=.96), and internal reliability (Cronbach's=.58). This tool is useful for training programs, since assessing EBM/information mastery is an important part of the evaluation of physician skills.