Objective: Assess the clinical competence in Gynecology and obstetrics to the Internship students of the Faculty of Medicine, UNAM.
Method: The study design was descriptive, transverse type. We assessed 64 students, which had finished their gynecology field rotation with the objective structured clinical examination. The criteria to consider a competent performance level, was arbitrarily set up in 60%, both for individual problems and for the exam's global result.
Results: In 15 stations, the result was a 56.2 global average. The best performances were achieved in the following stations: take the pap smear (74.7), Pregnancy diagnostic (67.9), history of Gynecology and obstetrics (67.1), self examination of breast explanation (62.2) preclampsia (61.7) and cervicovaginitis (60). All the rest got a mark lower than 60.
Discussion: The results are lower than the ones obtained in written exams, because these cannot assess clinical skills. It could be observed that a student's performance in a clinical problem does not certainly predict his performance in other, so it seems to be determined more by the specific knowledge and the student's experience related to the case, than by a general problem-solving skill.
Conclusions: The results show the advantages of this instrument to assess clinical skills, that justify its application in the formative process. This work evidences that its necessary to improve the acquisition of basic clinical skills trough systematic instructionals strategies and greater opportunities of learning.