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Bridging the gap between self-assessment and faculty assessment of clinical performance in restorative dentistry: A
Ghaith Alfakhry1,2, Khattab Mustafa2,3, M Abdulhadi Alagha4
1Faculty of Dentistry, Damascus University, Damascus, Syria.
Purpose/Objectives:
The current study was undertaken to investigate whether self-assessment of clinical skills of undergraduate dental students could be bridged with faculty assessment by deliberate training over an extended period. A secondary aim was to explore students' perception of self-assessment and its effect on their learning and motivation. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A prospective pilot study was conducted at the Department of Restorative Dentistry at Damascus University. Sixteen students participated in the study, ranging in age between 22 and 23 years. A modified Direct Observation of Procedural Skills form with a grading rubric was used to register and guide students' self-assessment; both were pretested on four students before the study. In total, four clinical encounters were completed by each student. Students were trained on how to conduct proper self-assessment before and after each clinical encounter. A postcourse questionnaire was used to investigate students' perception of self-assessment.
Results:
Bias in self-assessment decreased consistently after each encounter, and the difference in bias between the first (bias = 0.77) and the last encounter (bias = 0.21) was significant with a medium effect size (p = .022, d = 0.64). The percentage of disconfirming performance dimensions decreased from 39.7% to 26.9%. Students' ability to exactly pinpoint strengths improved consistently and significantly. However, their ability to pinpoint areas of improvement was volatile and showed no significant difference. Bland-Altman graph plots showed higher levels of agreement between self-assessment and faculty assessment. Moreover, students' perception of self-assessment was very positive overall.
Conclusions:
These findings suggest the possibility that the gap between self-assessment and faculty assessment could be bridged through deliberate training. Future longitudinal research using a larger sample size is still required to further explore whether self-assessment can be actively bridged with faculty assessment by deliberate training.
