The OSCE clinical skills stations

Written and checked against the NMC’s published sources by The NMCMATE editorial team.Last checked 2 September 2026.

Four of the ten stations are practical skills, set as 2 pairs of 2, and they are the part of the exam this site has said least about. The NMC's OSCE web page names no skills at all, which is why most of what circulates is a preparation provider's reconstruction. Its candidate booklet names 23 of them, sets out what it expects of your communication throughout, and tells you plainly to talk while you work. Here is that, with the qualifications the NMC put on it and which the reconstructions tend to drop.

What the NMC publishes about these four stations

• They come as 2 pairs of 2 linked stations. A pair lasts up to 21 minutes together, with 4 minutes between the pairings. No figure is published for one skill on its own.
• They are performed on a manikin or on equipment. The booklet's instruction for that is worth quoting rather than paraphrasing: "If you are being assessed using a manikin, please remember to verbalise your actions, and reasons for actions, in the same way as you would with a real patient. If you ask the manikin a question, the assessor will answer accordingly."
• So the words are assessed as well as the hands. Working correctly in silence leaves an assessor with nothing to credit, because they can only mark what you showed or said.
• Communication is assessed continually, across all ten stations rather than in one of them, and the booklet sets out 4 areas it means by that: approaching the patient or manikin, explaining and advising, involving the patient in management, nursing assessment.
• One entry on the skills list is field-specific, paediatric basic life support for children's nursing. Everything else on it is one list for every field of practice.
• The NMC says a reading list is provided linking the evidence base for each skills station. That is the source to revise the procedures from, along with the NICE and Royal College of Nursing guidance it points at.

Where candidates come unstuck

• Treating the list as a syllabus. The NMC calls these typical skills that may be tested and says the list includes them, so a site presenting it as the definitive set of skills stations has added a claim the NMC did not make.
• Assuming a skill only appears in a skills station. The booklet says a skill may be tested on its own or within a nursing scenario, so any of these can turn up inside the APIE.
• Rehearsing the procedure in silence. This is the one the booklet pre-empts in as many words, and it is the difference between doing the right thing and being marked for it. Say what you are doing, and say why.
• Revising from a file called "the OSCE marking criteria". The NMC does not publish the grids, so whatever is being passed around was written by somebody else, and rehearsing against it means rehearsing one person's guess.
• Preparing the procedures and not the communication. A candidate can be technically correct and still lose marks across every station, because the 4 communication areas are assessed throughout rather than in a station of their own.

Common questions

Which clinical skills can the NMC OSCE test?

The candidate booklet names 23, from aseptic non-touch technique and injections through to nutritional and bowel assessment. The full list is on this page. Read it as the shape of what is expected rather than a syllabus: the NMC's own wording is that these are typical skills the list includes, not that they are all of them.

Are the skills stations done on a real patient?

On a manikin or on equipment, and sometimes with an actor. The booklet asks you to treat a manikin exactly as you would a real patient, including asking it questions, and says the assessor will answer on its behalf.

Do I have to talk while I work on the manikin?

Yes, and the booklet says so directly: verbalise your actions and your reasons for actions, in the same way you would with a real patient. It is not a stylistic preference. An assessor cannot credit a decision you made silently.

How long do the skills stations take?

A pair of linked skills stations lasts up to 21 minutes in total, with 4 minutes between the two pairings. The NMC publishes no figure for a single skill, so a site quoting one has filled in a blank.

Does your simulator cover the skills stations?

No, and it cannot: 20 of the 23 skills are physical performance on equipment, and no amount of typing rehearses your hands. 3 of them are conversation and paperwork rather than a procedure, and those already appear inside our APIE stations. Our simulator covers assessment-style stations from the 10: you hold the conversation with a simulated patient by typing, and are marked against criteria we wrote ourselves. The four clinical skills stations are performed on manikins and equipment and are not simulated here. The result is a simulated verdict, not a prediction of how an NMC assessor would mark you.

How do I practise saying it out loud?

Write it out. Our verbalisation drill takes four of these skills, asks you to type what you would say in the room, and tells you which of the expected points you covered and which you did not. It is free and needs no account, because it compares wording rather than asking a model. It checks the saying and not the doing, which is the only half of a skills station anything typed can reach.

Where do I find the evidence base for a skill?

The NMC says a reading list is provided with links to the evidence base for each skills station, and points at the Royal College of Nursing, NICE and SIGN as sources. Use those rather than a summary written by a preparation provider, including this one.

This page is one part of the exam. Work through the whole thing with the NMC OSCE pages.