OSCE › Station
ANTT wound dressing, catheter care and urinalysis
RCSI heading: Fundamentals of nursing care. You get 2 minutes with the descriptor outside the door and 10 inside, marked competent or not competent on every line. RCSI publishes no sample for this station; the descriptor below follows the layout of the two samples it does publish. Check rcsi.com before your date.
Rehearse it
Stand up, say it aloud, use whatever is on your desk as the equipment. The debrief is the competency sheet and the assessor’s questions.
To assess aseptic non touch technique on a simple wound dressing, care of an indwelling urinary catheter, taking a catheter specimen, and reading a urine dipstick.
Mr Sean Brennan, 70, day four after a laparotomy. He has a midline wound with a soiled dressing due for change, an indwelling urethral catheter on day four, and this morning his urine is cloudy and he feels shivery. A dressing pack, sterile saline, a dipstick pot and a specimen kit are on the trolley.
You are required to change the dressing using Standard-ANTT, assess the wound, check the catheter and the drainage system, take a catheter specimen of urine correctly, dipstick a sample, and say what you do with the result.
- Hand hygiene, introduce yourself, check identity and allergies (dressings, chlorhexidine, latex), explain and gain consent, analgesia if needed, privacy
- Clean the trolley, check dates and packaging, open the pack to make the general aseptic field without touching the inside
- Name the key parts and key sites and protect them: the wound, the sterile gauze, the tips of forceps, the saline pot
- Non-sterile gloves and apron to remove the old dressing, look at the exudate, dispose, gloves off, hand hygiene
- Assess the wound aloud: size, edges, colour of the bed, exudate, odour, signs of infection, surrounding skin, pain
- Sterile gloves or non-touch with forceps, clean from clean to dirty, one wipe per swab, apply the new dressing without touching its underside, date it
- Catheter: secure, tubing not kinked, bag below the bladder and off the floor, closed system, meatal hygiene, day count and why it is still in
- Take the catheter specimen from the sampling port after cleaning it, never from the bag, label at the bedside, send with the form
- Dipstick: dip fully, tap off excess, read each pad at its printed time against the bottle, say what leucocytes, nitrites, blood and protein suggest
- Act on the picture: observations and INEWS, sepsis screen if triggered, inform the team, document all of it
Throughout: communicate in an accurate, clear and effective manner; demonstrate a level of competence essential for safe practice.
The pass: theory and OSCE
Run every station on the clock.
€79€59once, 6 months of access. Not a subscription.
Launch price until 15 October
Card payment by Stripe. Full refund within 14 days if you have answered fewer than 100 questions and sat no full mock since paying. You get two attempts at the real paper; a fail means sitting all 150 questions again. Refunds and guarantee. Given a code by your agency? Enter it in your account.
Competencies assessed
Every RCSI descriptor lists the same five domains from the NMBI standards.
- Professional values and conduct of the nurse
- Nursing practice and clinical decision-making
- Knowledge and cognitive competences
- Communication and interpersonal competences
- Management and team competences
Mistakes candidates report
- Touching the inside of the dressing pack while opening it, then carrying on.
- Taking the old dressing off with the sterile gloves you will dress with.
- Going back over the wound with the same swab.
- Drawing the specimen from the drainage bag tap.
- Reading the dipstick straight away or minutes late. Each pad has its own time on the bottle.
Practise the parts
Sources
- ANTT: Aseptic Non Touch Technique, clinical practice framework checked 2026-09-16
- HSE: Living with a urinary catheter checked 2026-09-16
- HSE: Urinary tract infections checked 2026-09-16
- HSE National Wound Management Guidelines (2018) checked 2026-09-16
This descriptor is a practice piece written to the shape of the RCSI samples. It is not an exam task, and the exam may ask anything from the reading list.