Development and use of military-unique standardized gynecology patients in military undergraduate medical education

Performance-based testing using standardized patients is becoming increasingly popular as a means to assess the clinical competence of medical students. Medical students entering postgraduate training in military treatment facilities have the additional responsibility of military readiness. The increasing number of women in the active armed forces and the diverse missions encountered by the military today necessitate inclusion of military-unique standardized gynecologic patients and scenarios into curricula. We developed a military-unique standardized gynecology patient and scenario and an objective structured clinical examination to evaluate medical students' skills in data gathering and synthesis, development of differential diagnoses, problem solving, and working through military-unique issues of the patient scenario. Integration of an objective structured clinical examination of military-unique gynecology standardized patient scenarios into the obstetrics and gynecology curriculum at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences can lead to successful assessment of student clinical skills and provide a means of ongoing military readiness training.