NMC OSCE Practice: Station Checklists and Scenarios 2026

The OSCE tests whether you can do UK nursing, not describe it. Ten stations, roughly three hours, actors as patients and examiners with checklists. The knowledge is the same knowledge that passed your CBT; what’s new is performing procedures the UK way, narrating consent, and documenting everything, under a timer.

That checklist mindset is the whole course. Four habits earn or lose marks on every station regardless of the skill being tested: hand hygiene at the right moments, sharps and waste disposal, dignity and consent, and documentation at the end. You’ll meet them in every chapter because the exam applies them in every station.

New to the OSCE? The main guide covers the exam itself first: structure, fees and retakes, and the station types. This course assumes that background and gets straight to practice.

The NMC OSCE at a glance

• What it is: Part 2 of the NMC Test of Competence, the practical exam, taken in person in the UK after you have passed the CBT.
• Format: 10 stations in about 3 hours, four linked APIE stations following one patient, four skills stations (two 21-minute pairs drawn from a list of 20 skills), and two 10-minute silent written stations.
• Cost: £794 for a full attempt; £397 for a partial resit (fewer than seven stations failed).
• Attempts: three, then a six-month wait before reapplying.
• Passing: each station is marked against a checklist, and four cross-cutting habits score on every one: hand hygiene at the right moments, sharps and waste disposal, dignity and consent, and documentation.

Source: NMC — Test of competence.

The full outline

All 35 chapters are live across three parts: the 20 skills stations (Part A), the 12 APIE scenarios (Part B), and the written stations and exam craft (Part C). Use the interactive outline further down this page to open any chapter. It also shows your saved quiz progress, so you can see which stations still need work.

How to use this course

Skills first, in any order; your two pairs on exam day come from the list, and you won’t know which until you’re there, so all 20 need to be automatic. Then the scenarios, which reward a different muscle: clinical reasoning under the APIE structure rather than procedure recall. Quiz scores save in your browser, so the chapters you’ve not yet mastered stay visible.

If your CBT is still ahead of you, sit the CBT question bank first; it’s the same knowledge base one exam earlier.