New OSCE stations from 26 October 2026

The NMC updated its OSCE resources page in September with another round of station replenishment, and this one is worth reading even if you are not sitting in mental health or children's nursing, because part of it reaches every field sitting after the change takes hold. Anyone sitting an OSCE for the first time from Monday 26 October 2026 may meet any of the stations below, on the same six weeks' notice the regulator gave for the adult nursing round in February and the children's, mental health and midwifery round in April.

Fifteen new stations reach three fields at once

Adult nursing, mental health nursing and children's nursing all share the same new material this round. There are seven new evidence based practice stations: on donor human milk, on improving the physical health of a mental health patient, on oxygen saturations, on a patient's sleep on the ward, on parental presence, on physical restraint in mental health care, and on smoking and schizophrenia. There are eight new professional values stations: on hand washing, on information sharing, on missed information in a paediatric intensive care unit, on racism in mental health care, on self medication from ward stock, on a team Christmas party, on unsafe staffing levels, and on the use of bed rails.

A title on its own tells you the subject and nothing about what is actually marked. An evidence based practice station asks you to appraise a piece of research, not recall its conclusion, and a professional values station is a conversation marked on how you hold a position rather than on which option you pick, so reading the list above as revision topics rather than as questions is the right way to use it.

Mental health and children's nursing also gain their own scenarios

Mental health nursing gains two new assessment scenarios, one on psychosis and one on post-traumatic stress disorder, and three new skills stations, on medication adherence, on a mental state examination and on non-suicidal self-injury. Children's nursing gains one new assessment scenario, on an allergic reaction, and two new skills stations, on aseptic non-touch technique and on medication administration through a nasogastric tube. Adult nursing and learning disabilities nursing are not named in this particular announcement, which is how replenishment has worked all year: one round touches the fields it touches and the next one touches others.

The marking criteria documents moved with the stations

The NMC's own wording is specific about this. Anyone sitting for the first time on or after 26 October should be working from the updated marking criteria document for their field, because that is the version carrying the criteria for the stations above, and anyone who sat before that date keeps using the version they already had. If you downloaded a copy earlier in the year, it is worth checking the date on the front page again before you revise from it.

None of this is something our own simulator rehearses directly, and it never will be, in the same way a mock paper is not a rehearsal of this year's actual clinical questions. What we simulate is written to the published test specification rather than to this list, and the skills stations named above are not simulated here at all, since nobody learns aseptic technique by typing. What does transfer is the shape of each station type: an assessment that rewards noticing what you were not told, a professional values station that rewards holding a position under pressure, and an evidence based practice station that rewards reading a study rather than reciting one.