DETERMINING DENTAL STUDENT COMPETENCE

Almost 20 years ago dental education, including ancillary and residency training, made a fundamental shift to a competency model. Competency is the level of knowledge, skills, and values needed to begin independent practice. This replaced the older emphasis on process. It had formerly been assumed that if a student was exposed to good teaching for a set period of time, he or she must be ready for practice. The responsibility has been shifted from schools needing to demonstrate that they have done the traditional things well to requiring that they demonstrate that every graduate is in fact capable of independent performance as a dentist. This paper describes the nature of competency in predoctoral dental education and introduces some of the most common assessment methods schools use to ensure that each graduate is competent.