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How do visual-spatial and psychomotor abilities influence clinical performance in periodontal plastic surgery?
Rino Burkhardt1,2, Christoph H F Hämmerle1,2, Niklaus P Lang1,2
1Prince Philip Dental Hospital, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR.
Aim:
We want to evaluate the relationship of self-assessed experience and proficiency, manual dexterity and visual-spatial ability with surgical performance.
Material And Methods:
A total of 26 professionals were included in the study which consisted of four parts: (a) self-assessment by a questionnaire regarding proficiency and experience, (b) evaluation of visual-spatial ability, (c) testing of manual dexterity assessed by validated psychomotor tests and (d) evaluation of surgical performance by Objective Structured Assessment of Technical Skills (OSATS).
Results:
Self-assessed proficiency and experience levels did not correlate with objectively evaluated surgical performances (OSATS). However, low-level visual-spatial ability tests strongly correlated with OSATS while intermediate- and high-level tests did not. No correlation was found between psychomotor ability and clinical performance.
Conclusions:
Self-assessed proficiency is not a good predictor for surgical performance as experts tend to be overconfident. To evaluate and predict surgical performance, visual-spatial ability tests seem to be more appropriate than measuring manual dexterity which failed to correlate with the surgical outcome.
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