OSCE verbalisation drill
Written and checked against the NMC’s published sources by The NMCMATE editorial team.Last checked .
The NMC asks candidates working on a manikin to verbalise their actions and the reasons for them, in the same way they would with a real patient. That is the part of a skills station you can rehearse by typing, and the part a technically perfect candidate most often leaves silent. Pick a skill, write out what you would say in the room, and this tells you which of the expected points you covered and which you did not, with the wording that would have counted.
This checks the saying, not the doing. It cannot see your technique, your hands or your timing, and it is not a marking grid: the NMC does not publish one, so nothing here is what an assessor would score you against. It errs on the strict side, so a point you made in wording we did not anticipate may come back as missed, and the phrasings that count are shown so you can see why. Use it to build the habit of narrating, not to decide whether you are ready.
You are on an adult medical ward. A patient admitted yesterday with a chest infection has been handed over to you as "a bit quiet this morning". You have been asked to take a full set of observations and act on what you find.
Common questions
- Why does the OSCE need me to talk while I work?
- Because an assessor can only credit what you show or say, and a manikin cannot tell them what you were thinking. The NMC's candidate booklet says it directly: verbalise your actions, and your reasons for actions, in the same way you would with a real patient.
- Does this mark my clinical technique?
- No, and it cannot. Nothing typed into a box rehearses your hands. Every point this checks is either a communication expectation the NMC publishes or a safety check said out loud, such as confirming identity, asking about allergies or naming where the waste goes.
- It said I missed something I definitely said. Why?
- Because it matches wording rather than meaning, and it is built to err strict. Telling you that you covered a safety check you never mentioned would be the worse mistake, so where it cannot recognise a phrasing it says you missed the point and shows you the wording that would have counted.
- Is this the marking criteria for the skills stations?
- No. The NMC does not publish the marking grids, so any file circulating as "the OSCE marking criteria" was written by somebody else. The points here come from the communication expectations the NMC does publish, plus safety checks that are standard UK practice, and each one says where it came from.
- Do I need an account, and is what I write stored?
- No account, and nothing you write is stored. Your text is sent to be checked and is not kept, and the only record we hold is a count of how many checks happened today, which has nothing in it about who asked.
- How is it checked?
- In two passes. Your wording is compared against the phrasings we recognise, which happens instantly in your browser, and anything that pass did not find is read for meaning so that a point made in unexpected words still counts. Where the second pass is unavailable the page says so, because a wording-only check misses a great deal and a low count from it is not a verdict.
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