Obviously they should be practiced. It is hard to perform any of these examinations without missing out details even up until the week of the exam. This will lose you marks in OSCEs and if you have missed anything serious might fail you. Four tips:
Examiners say that they can distinguish a good from poor candidate in the first minute, therefore first impressions are important! Here is how to begin any examination:
Presenting is a suprisingly difficult skill and the only way to get good is to practice. For some examples of the perfect way to present certain conditions see the book Medical Short Cases for Medical Students (Ryder, Mir, Freeman) .
We have included example presentations for some of the more common OSCE stations. The key is to present the positive findings and the relevant negatives. Medical students often suffer from presenting every positive/negative finding (e.g. there was no ascites, the liver was not enlarges). This makes the examiner feel that you do not know which findings are important. It is much more succint and professional to say "there were no abnormalities of the abdominal system."