ADC Part 2 OSCE: Station Format, Scoring, and How to Prepare

What ADC Part 2 Actually Is

The ADC assessment runs in three stages, and Part 2 is the last of them:

1. Initial assessment — verification that your qualification makes you eligible to enter the pathway at all. Requires a minimum four-year full-time degree.
2. Written examination (Part 1) — a two-day paper testing the application of knowledge to clinical practice.
3. Practical examination (Part 2) — a two-day simulation-based assessment of clinical and technical skill. This is the one this article is about.

Two timing rules catch people out. You are eligible to sit the practical within three years of passing the written exam, and you cannot sit consecutive practical examination periods — so a failed attempt costs you more than one sitting’s wait. The examination centre is in Melbourne, and the exam runs twice a year.

Fees, dates and eligibility rules change between periods. Treat this article as orientation and confirm the current details against the ADC’s own published material before you plan around them.

The Two Exam Days

These two days test genuinely different things. The technical day is psychomotor: can your hands produce an acceptable preparation and restoration under time pressure. The clinical skills day is almost entirely about reasoning and communication — and that is the half most candidates under-rehearse, because it feels less like “real dentistry” than cutting a cavity.

The Ten-Station OSCE

On the clinical skills day you rotate through ten stations. Each is set up in its own room with a task relating to a clinical scenario or skill demonstration, and a set time limit. Tasks may use standardised simulated patients, video-based scenarios, procedures on manikins, or other resources.

There are two broad station types. Standard stations are the communication and reasoning ones — taking a history, explaining a management plan, assessing risk, counselling, handling an emergency. Technical or procedural stations involve doing something with your hands: taking intra-oral radiographs, applying rubber dam, designing a partial denture.

Recurring standard-station archetypes, and what each is really testing:

The Three Assessment Domains

ADC blueprints the practical examination by domain and discipline. The domains describe broad categories of professional activity rather than subject areas, which is why a single station can be scored against more than one of them:

Communication, critical thinking, professionalism and ethics, scientific knowledge and infection control run across the domains rather than sitting inside one. In practice this means a candidate can reach the right diagnosis and still fail a station on how they handled the patient.

How the Pass Mark Is Set

This is the part candidates most often misunderstand, and it changes how you should prepare.

Each task is scored against a task-specific checklist of up to fifteen criteria, graded very good (3), satisfactory (2), borderline (1), or unsatisfactory (0). Examiners also give an overall global rating of the performance.

The station’s pass mark is then calculated by borderline regression. Every candidate’s checklist score is plotted against the global rating they received; a line of best fit is drawn; and the point where that line crosses “borderline” becomes the cut score for that station. Two consequences follow:

• The pass mark is not fixed and is not published in advance.Unlike the written exam, where the standard is set independently of how others perform, a practical station’s cut score comes out of the whole cohort’s data.
• Ticking boxes is not enough. Because the global rating shapes where the cut score lands, an encounter that hits checklist items while feeling disjointed or unsafe to the examiner is scored differently from one that hits the same items fluently.

Station results are then combined into an overall decision using a partial compensatory model — strong stations offset weak ones to a limited degree, but not without limit.

What the Pass Rate Tells You

The ADC’s published results data makes uncomfortable reading. The practical examination pass rate was 11% in FY2025 — 205 passes from 1,880 candidates — the lowest in six years of published data. It has fallen every year since FY2021, when it was 36%. The written exam is no gentler: 12% in FY2025, 404 passes from 3,325 candidates.

Read that alongside the cost and the timing rules and the strategic conclusion is straightforward: this is not an exam to sit as a diagnostic. A failed attempt costs a large fee, at least two sitting periods of delay, and — if your written exam result ages out of its validity window — potentially the written exam again.

How to Prepare for the Clinical Skills Day

The technical day needs manikin time — there is no substitute, and no software replaces it. The clinical skills day is different, and it is where preparation is most often shallow.

1. Rehearse out loud, not in your head. Reading about breaking a treatment plan to a reluctant patient builds nothing. The skill is verbal and it degrades under time pressure.
2. Practise to the clock. Stations are short. Candidates who have only ever practised untimed consistently run out of station before they reach their management plan.
3. Drill the cross-cutting criteria deliberately. Introducing yourself, confirming identity, explaining as you go, seeking consent, checking understanding, and closing with a summary are scored in every station. They are also the easiest marks to drop when you are focused on the clinical content.
4. Train the honest-disclosure reflex. Several archetypes — consent, implant risk, a guarded prognosis — are specifically testing whether you will state an uncomfortable risk plainly instead of reassuring the patient into agreement.
5. Get feedback on the encounter, not just the answer.Because the global rating drives the cut score, “did I reach the right diagnosis” is the wrong self-assessment question. The right one is whether the whole encounter would read as safe and competent to an examiner.

An honest scope note: simulated-patient stations can be rehearsed as conversational practice, and that is where structured repetition helps most. The technical skills day and the procedural stations cannot be — those need a manikin, a handpiece, and supervised hands-on time.

ADC Part 2 Questions (FAQ)

What is the ADC Part 2 exam?

ADC Part 2 is the practical examination in the Australian Dental Council assessment pathway for overseas-qualified dentists. It runs over two days — a technical skills day on manikins and a clinical skills day consisting of a ten-station OSCE — and is taken after passing the Part 1 written examination.

How many stations are in the ADC Part 2 OSCE?

Ten. Each station is set up in its own room with a defined task and a set time limit, and may involve a simulated patient, a video scenario, a manikin, or other clinical resources.

What is the ADC Part 2 pass rate?

According to the ADC's published results data, the practical examination pass rate was 11% in FY2025 (205 passes from 1,880 candidates) — the lowest in six years of published data, down from 36% in FY2021.

How long do I have to sit Part 2 after passing Part 1?

Candidates are eligible to sit the practical examination within three years of completing the written examination. Candidates also cannot sit consecutive practical examination periods.

How is the ADC Part 2 OSCE pass mark decided?

The pass mark is not a fixed number. Each station is standard-set using borderline regression: examiners award both a checklist score and a global rating for every candidate, and the station cut score is derived from the whole cohort. Results are then combined across stations using a partial compensatory model.

Can I practise ADC OSCE stations online?

The simulated-patient stations — history taking, explaining a diagnosis or treatment plan, consent, risk assessment, health promotion, and chairside emergencies — can be rehearsed as conversational simulations. The technical skills day and procedural stations require hands-on manikin work and cannot be practised online.