Students can successfully perform learned clinical skills on wards, but find it more technically demanding and stressful. 

Clinical skills training in simulation laboratories is characterized by predictable and stable learning and testing environment, while work on wards is more unpredictable.

Our research question was: Is there a significant difference between Year-3 medical students’ Venepuncture Procedure OSCE results when tested in simulation laboratory and on wards?

17 Year-3 medical students went through clinical skills training in our simulation laboratory. We tested their venepuncture skills using OSCE in the simulation laboratory and then on wards under supervision of graduated nurses. They also graded technical difficulty and stressfulness of both procedures on a scale from 1 to 5. Data was analysed using SPSS Statistics Programme.

Students can successfully transform their learned clinical skills into clinical practice.

Students gained averagely 29.0/30.0 (SD±1.3) points in the simulation laboratory and 28.5/30 (SD±1.9) points on wards. Average completion time was 307 and 614 seconds, respectively. 

There is no significant difference in points (p=0.425), but a significant increase in completion time on wards compared to OSCE in the simulation laboratory (p<0.001). 

Students found venepuncture on wards significantly more technically demanding (average grade 3.9/5) and stressful (4.3/5) than in the simulation laboratory (average grades 2.1/5 and 1.9/5, respectively), p-values being <0.001 and <0.001, respectively.