---
title: "Running the exam"
description: "How to run an OSCE: plan sessions and circuits, run the day from a timed sheet, keep stations secure, capture every mark and handle incidents."
canonical: https://studydrome.com/docs/osce/delivery/
updated: 2026-10-08
---

# Running the exam

How to run an OSCE: plan sessions and circuits, run the day from a timed sheet, keep stations secure, capture every mark and handle incidents.

This section covers exam day and the sessions around it. Everything designed so far is now put to the test. The test is a room full of nervous candidates, a clock that does not stop, and a set of stations that must run the same way for every group.

The section starts with the cohort. It shows how to split candidates across sessions, parallel circuits and days, how to allocate them and their examiners, and how to check afterward that the groups sat the same exam. The venue itself, its rooms and its equipment, is in the planning section. The three briefings on the morning are in the people section.

It then covers the day. There is the coordinator's run-sheet, timed from site opening to reset, with one owner per line and a go/no-go check before the first bell. There is the security procedure: what leaks between cohorts, how quarantine works, and what is counted at every station. And there is the evidence on paper versus electronic marking, which decides how many marks go missing.

The last part is what goes wrong. A simulated patient drifts. A station's equipment fails. A candidate is unwell, or raises a concern mid-circuit. An examiner does not arrive. The devices go down. The section sets out a contingency register with the first response, the person who decides, and what the log records. It closes with how to run a virtual or hybrid exam, and with what the exam office and the manager see on screen while the circuit runs.

The exam office and the floor manager own this section. The assessment lead signs off the contingency register.