Objective Structured Clinical Examination in Physiotherapy and Learning Styles: A Descriptive Analysis

The objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) allows assessing standardized clinical skills and is used both for the preparation and for the evaluation of students in health sciences. However, there is a lack of information about the learning styles used by physiotherapy students when preparing the OSCE. Therefore, the aim of this study was to identify the learning styles used during OSCE preparation in the main areas of physiotherapy intervention (Neurological, respiratory, and musculoskeletal “MSK”). Additionally, the percentage of passing students was calculated, and the variables gender and physiotherapy areas were associated with learning styles. The study involved three teachers and 57 students. Collaborative clinical reasoning and case-based learning were employed as teaching methodologies by the instructors. Student data were collected using the Index of Learning Styles questionnaire (ILS). The results showed a balance between the active-reflective and sequential-global dimensions in the respiratory and MSK area. There was a high preference for the sensory dimension in neurology and a moderate preference for the visual dimension in MSK. The failure rate was 25%, and there was no association between the variables (p > 0.05). Further studies are needed to identify the most common learning style among physiotherapy students and to employ the most appropriate teaching strategy.