This post is one of a series of blog posts that will discuss how the Digital Education team have been working alongside the Peninsula Dental School to replace the traditional paper-based ISCE with a digital solution. Whilst this project has resulted in the digitisation of several forms, this post will focus only on the ISCE. The post will look at: What is an ISCE, highlighting the benefits, challenges and concerns.
The next couple of posts I will go into: The Project; The training materials I provided; How the Dental school embarrassed the challenge: The success they had running their first Mock and LIVE ISCE, using online forms on iPads.
So what is an ISCE? ISCE stands for ‘Integrated Structured Clinical Examination’ and gives students studying medicine or dentistry the opportunity to demonstrate their retention and application of skills and knowledge in a clinical setting. I still had to look this up.
Digitising the ISCE brings a number of benefits, which help not only the staff managing and partaking in the ISCE, but also the students undertaking it.
Benefits
Efficiency savings and environment savings:
- Less administration time to process the ISCE data by removing manual data entry by administration staff.
- Streamlining the electronic sign-off process for students during their clinical attachments.
- Providing a paperless solution.
Digital vs. paper solution
Whilst there are many benefits, there are also many challenges to overcome. Not all concern was voiced by the Dental School, but I still needed to take them into account, as some concerns were valid and I had to ensure the forms did not miss balance the smooth-running assessment that they already had.
Challenges
Staff concerns:
- Digitising the ISCE and the effect this will have on the delivery of the ISCE via iPads vs. via Paper.
- Network reliability and the impact of any technical issues they may encounter.
- Those delivering the ISCE knowing how to use the iPads efficiently and increases to the time taken to record the ISCE examination.
- Effects of holding an iPad for a prolonged period vs. a lighter clipboard with paper.