European journal of dental education : official journal of the Association for Dental Education in Europe
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Competence of practising dentists is an issue that is being addressed in both the undergraduate and postgraduate environment in dental education. The Association of Dental Education in Europe has opened the debate further with guidelines for qualifying dentists in Europe. This puts further pressure on dental schools to produce graduates who are transparently competent. This invited commentary examines the differing concepts of competence and how they might be assessed in the undergraduate dental curriculum.
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The assessment of competence in clinical skills has become more frequent in published healthcare curricula and syllabuses recently. There are agreed mechanisms for the assessment of competence in the post-graduate environment, but no consensus within the undergraduate curriculum. This paper seeks to develop an agreed generic checklist for the assessment of competence in forceps exodontia. ⋯ Using this generic checklist, it may now be possible to pool data inter-institution to perform more powerful analyses on how our students obtain, or fail to obtain competence in forceps exodontia.
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Hiroshima University Hospital used the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) as a formative and summative assessment tool to evaluate trainees' competence. ⋯ Trainees viewed OSCEs positively and appreciated their effectiveness from a pedagogical perspective, and OSCE positively affected the trainees' approach to learning. A ten-year process of OSCE change has helped with educational reforms because of its adaptability. Flexible attitudes to change are necessary for stakeholders to achieve the desired reforms.
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Predominantly theoretical courses are employed to teach German dental students in implant dentistry at pre-clinical stage. As implant dentistry is an important part of the clinical treatment spectra, practical implementation of this field at an early stage of education seems to be appropriate. By a newly developed interdisciplinary implant dentistry course, students should assess an improved competence level as well as first practical experiences in the field of implant dentistry at the pre-clinical stage of their education. ⋯ The aim of this first interdisciplinary course for pre-clinical students was to enhance competence level and practical implementation of implant dentistry at an early stage of education. Participants' comments and suggestions on the questionnaires demonstrated the positive response and the general interest in this form of dental education, as well as the demand for further development of training in this field.
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Improving clinical assessment: evaluating students' ability to identify and apply clinical criteria.
There is ongoing concern by health educators over the inability of professionals to accurately self-assess their clinical behaviour and standards, resulting in doubts over a key expectation of effective self-regulation in the health professions. Participation by students in the assessment process has been shown to increase the understanding of assessment criteria in written assessment tasks. How this might transfer to the clinical setting is the focus of this study. This paper is part of an ongoing investigation of the impact on learning of a series of activities that provides students with opportunities to discuss and apply criteria and standards associated with self-assessment in clinical dentistry. Our aim was to evaluate whether participation in these assessment activities improved the ability of first-year dental students to recognise behaviours demonstrated by 'peers' in videos of clinical scenarios and to relate these to the assessment criteria. ⋯ This early exposure to the process of clinical assessment, coupled with ongoing self-assessment and tutor feedback throughout first year, improved the ability of first-year students to identify and apply some key assessment criteria to observed 'peer' behaviour, and this ability was retained over time.