Evaluating dental student self-assessment across preclinical anatomy waxing and operative exercises

A career in healthcare is built on the foundations of continuous self-reflection and self-assessment. Previous studies have solely compared student self-assessment to faculty grades in a single discipline. The objective of this study was to investigate whether associations of a student's self-assessment skills exist across multiple disciplines in the predoctoral setting.

Sixty-five students from two class years at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine completed preclinical competency exams in dental anatomy waxing and operative dentistry. The difference between the student's self-assessment score and average faculty grade for each exercise was calculated as the student‒faculty (S-F) gap, which served as a proxy to determine how students evaluate their work. Regression analysis was performed to assess associations between wax-up and preclinical operative S-F gaps.

Mean S-F gaps for waxing and preclinical operative procedures were positive (5.7 ± 6.1 and 7.6 ± 6.7, respectively). Additionally, students in the lower quartile tended to overestimate performance to a greater degree than their peers in the upper quartile. Furthermore, the waxing S-F gaps were positively associated with S-F gaps of each operative procedure, particularly with the combined operative exercise S-F gaps, where a statistically significant association was seen (coefficient = 0.28; p = 0.04).

Previously, we identified a negative correlation between students' self-assessment skills (S-F gaps) and their preclinical performance. In this study, we further demonstrated an association of S-F gaps in two fundamental exercises: wax-up and operative dentistry. This underscores the roles of S-F gaps as possible indicators of students' preclinical and clinical performance, and it holds potential to become a widely standardized and applicable calculation that may help evaluate the effectiveness of the dental curricula and optimize student learning.