OSCE practice for UK medical students
Medical OSCEs are marked on what you actually say in the room: a focused history taken against the clock, a summary the patient can correct, and an explanation that lands with someone who is worried. Practise all of it out loud with an AI patient, then read the mark scheme.
What is live
Every station runs with a live AI patient and is marked against its own mark scheme afterwards.
The station types you will meet
Medical OSCEs lean on two things above all else: working out what is going on, and explaining it to someone who is worried about it. Each hub sets out how that kind of station is marked and lists every station in it.
History taking
Focused histories against the clock — build the picture, screen for red flags, explore ideas and concerns, and summarise back.
- Open questions first, closed ones to fill the gaps
- Red-flag screening that still sounds like a conversation
- A summary the patient is invited to correct
Counselling
Explaining a diagnosis, a medication or a procedure to a worried patient, and handling the questions that follow.
- Finding out what they already understand before you explain
- Information in chunks, with a check that each one landed
- Responding to emotion instead of talking through it
When one station holds two jobs
Later in the course, and in finals especially, stations start bundling. You take the history and then explain what it means to someone frightened by the answer; you are handed results and have to work them into a conversation you are also expected to keep going. The clock does not grow to match, so part of what is being assessed is triage — deciding what to drop when there is more to do than time to do it in.
There is no separate long-station category in the bank, because the components are the same ones. The way to rehearse it is to run a history station and a counselling station back to back as a timed circuit, which is closer to the real thing than either in isolation.
What a longer station bundles
- A focused history — gathered in a fraction of the time you would normally give it
- Something to interpret — results or a chart you have to fold into the conversation, out loud
- An explanation — in the patient’s language, not the language you revised in
- A plan you both agree — checked back, with the last words belonging to the patient
What examiners are actually marking
Station content changes. The behaviours that score do not, and they appear on nearly every mark scheme in the circuit — which makes them the cheapest marks on the paper to collect.
- The summary is a scored event, not a courtesy — handed back to the patient before you move on, with an explicit invitation to correct it. Medical circuits examine this directly, and it is often the single largest block of marks after the history itself.
- Hypothesis-driven questioning — the examiner is watching whether your questions narrow as the picture forms, or whether you are working through a memorised list regardless of the answers.
- Signposting the handover between tasks — when a station asks you to take a history and then explain something, say the join out loud. Stations that bundle two jobs lose marks in the seam between them.
- A collateral history framed as collateral — when the person in front of you is a relative, the marks are for establishing the patient’s baseline and speaking about them in the third person throughout.
- Time triaged deliberately — longer stations hold more than fits. Deciding out loud what you are prioritising scores better than silently running out of clock mid-sentence.
- A plan the patient could repeat — what happens next, who arranges it and when. Medical stations are lost in the closing ninety seconds more often than in the opening ones.
How a station runs here
The same order as the exam hall: a brief, a clock, a consultation, then marking you can act on. Stations can also be run back to back as a timed mock circuit when you want to rehearse a whole morning rather than one encounter.
- 1
Read the brief
Who you are, who is in front of you and what you have been asked to do. Read the task verb before anything else — “take a history” and “explain the diagnosis” put the marks in completely different places. The brief never tells you what is wrong with the patient.
- 2
Consult with the AI patient, against the clock
Speak out loud or type, and the patient answers in role. The station runs to its own clock — 8 min for the medical stations in the bank — and stops when the time stops, mid-sentence if that is where you are.
- 3
Get marked against the mark scheme
What you actually asked, the ground you covered, how you summarised and how you closed — scored against that station’s scheme rather than a general impression.
- 4
Review, then run it again days later
Write down the exact words you failed to say, not the topic you missed. Rerun the station two days later, changing one specific thing. A rerun straight afterwards only tests short-term memory.
Where marks are lost
Stations are rarely failed on knowledge. They are failed on a small number of very repeatable mistakes, all of which are trainable.
Interrupting the opening
The patient starts talking and you start narrowing within seconds. Everything you now have to extract question by question was on offer for free.
Running a mnemonic at somebody
A structure the examiner can hear is worth marks. A structure the patient can hear being recited is not — same content, different score.
Ideas and concerns as a box-tick
Left to the last thirty seconds, asked flatly, and the answer not used for anything. Asked early, it changes the rest of the consultation.
Summarising to the examiner
The summary is a communication item. Turning to the assessor to deliver it loses the mark it was there to earn.
The monologue
In counselling stations, talking for two unbroken minutes. No chunking, no pause, and no way of knowing whether any of it landed.
Never reaching the plan
Time goes on the history, the bell goes before the next step, the safety-net and the check of understanding. Those are the marks nobody budgets for.
If you change one thing
Practising without a study partner
An OSCE is a spoken exam, and almost all the revision for it is silent. You can know the shape of a collapse history cold and still hear yourself fumble the first question, because the first time any of it left your mouth was in front of an examiner.
The AI patient answers in role and does not volunteer the thing you forgot to ask about. You can speak to it or type, the station runs to the clock, and afterwards you are marked against that station’s mark scheme with the points you hit and the points you missed listed separately. The second list is the useful one — if the same item goes missing across three stations, that is technique rather than knowledge, and technique is the quicker thing to fix.
What the free plan includes
- Browse the full station bank
- One premium AI consultation each month
- Unlimited text-based consultations
- Mark schemes on completed stations
Practising by text costs nothing. Paid plans start at £8.99 a month — the pricing page sets out what is in each.
Medical stations you can explore here
12 medical stations written up in full. Each page carries the brief as it would read on the door, what the examiner is marking, and where candidates usually drop marks. The rest of the bank is in the app.
Chest pain history
A patient presents with chest pain. Take a focused history, characterise the pain, and screen for the features that change urgency.
Headache history
A patient presents with headache. Establish the pattern and timeline, and screen carefully for features that need escalation.
Abdominal pain history
A patient presents with abdominal pain. Localise it, characterise it, and cover the systems review the site demands.
Breathlessness history
A patient presents with breathlessness. Establish onset and exercise tolerance, and separate cardiac from respiratory features.
Fatigue history
A patient presents with tiredness. A deliberately broad opening that rewards a structured, systematic approach.
Collapse history
A patient has collapsed. Reconstruct before, during and after, and establish what witnesses saw.
Diarrhoea history
A patient presents with a change in bowel habit. Establish the pattern and duration, and screen for systemic and alarm features.
Confusion: collateral history
A relative gives a collateral history about a confused patient. Establish the baseline and the time course.
Explaining a new diagnosis
Explain a newly confirmed diagnosis to a patient, check what they already understand, and handle their reaction.
Counselling on a new medication
Counsel a patient starting a new medicine: what it is for, how to take it, what to expect, and what to do if something changes.
Lifestyle and behaviour change
Discuss a behaviour change with a patient who is ambivalent about it, without lecturing them.
Explaining a procedure
Explain an upcoming investigation or procedure, covering what happens, why, and what the alternatives are.
The full station bank lists every station on the site, medical and pharmacy.
Common questions about medical OSCE practice
How is this different from reading a textbook or my notes?
Do I still need a study partner?
Is this useful before finals, or is it too early?
Does this work for pharmacy students too?
Practise a medical station out loud
Pick a station, take the history against the clock, summarise it back, and find out what the mark scheme says you missed.