How to cultivate and evaluate the nursing students′clinical competency is an important part of the process of higher nursing education .Objective structured clinical examination is regarded as an effective assessment method to evaluate the clinical com -petency of medical students .However , it is still at the initial stage in the nursing education in China .This article presents an overview on the design of nursing objective structured clinical examination , the present application of objective structured clinical examination in cultivating and evaluating the nursing clinical competency and the effectiveness of objective structured clinical examination .