Abstract
Aim: To explore whether the changes imposed on the clinical requirements and teaching and learning of MHSc Chiropractic students by the COVID-19 pandemic had any effect on the respective student’s academic clinical competency. This was done by comparing the MHSc chiropractic students’ Objective Structure Clinical Examination (OSCE) academic performance, indicating a student’s level of clinical competency, for both entrance and exit OSCE results, in the pre-COVID-19 years (2018 – 2019) with that of the during-COVID-19 years (2020 – 2021).
Method: This study was a retrospective, correlational, and quantitative study in design. This study did not have any human participants and made sole use of existing retrospective data in the form of academic results. Permission was requested from and obtained from the Head of Department of Chiropractic (Dr C Yelverton) and the Clinic Coordinator (Dr C Hay), to obtain the academic results for both the entrance and exit OSCE’s of the MHSc chiropractic students for the 2018-2019 cohort and the 2020-2021 cohort. All data was de-identified and randomised upon retrieval in order to maintain student anonymity. The data was then captured and further analysed by the researcher, alongside the assistance from a statistician from STATKON.
Results: While the data obtained from the intergroup correlational analysis show that, of the 12 modules, the MHSc chiropractic students performed better on the OSCE during-COVID-19 (2020-2021) than in the pre-COVID-19 (2020-2021) OSCE, the intragroup correlational analysis of data indicates that students had performed better on the entrance OSCE for both, pre-COVID-19 (2018-2019) and during-COVID-19 (2020-2021). The data comparison of the entrance and exit OSCE performance in pre-COVID-19 and during-COVID-19 suggests that the MHSc chiropractic students performed better on the entrance OSCE in pre-COVID-19 (2018-2019) and better on the exit OSCE during-COVID-19 (2020-2021).
Conclusion: The severity of the COVID-19 pandemic and its limitations imposed on the students brought about an anticipation that the OSCE performance of the MHSc chiropractic students would be poorer during-COVID-19 (2020-2021) than in pre-COVID-19 (2018-2019). Results of the data analysis, however, suggests that both cohorts performed similarly and thus suggesting that the academic performance of the MHSc chiropractic students did not seem to be negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent academic changes. It appears that neither learning approach, whether it was face-to-face or online, was superior to the other, but rather complementary to one another.