Oral Health and Dental Management

Abstract

Multisource Feedback of Work Place-Based Assessment in Dental Postgraduate Clinical Training

Hiroya Gotouda, Kazutaka Kasai, Yasuhiro Okamoto, Seiko Osawa, Mitsuhiro Ohta, ChiekoTaguchi, Michiharu Shimosaka, Shinichiro Aoki, Takanori Ito

Background: The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) requires multisource feedback (MSF) for internal medicine residents in outpatient settings owing to the number of factors involved in assessing clinical competence. While MSF of work place-based assessment (WPBA) reports are common among medical specialties, they are rare in dentistry. In addition, compared with undergraduate dentistry education, clinical performance assessment standards for postgraduate clinical training in dentistry have not been established. This study evaluates clinical performance assessments using MSF for trainee dentists. Materials and Methods: The supervising dentist, the dental hygienist, and the receptionist evaluated the professionalism, communication skills, patient care, and clinical practice using MSF for trainee dentists. Results: We found positive correlations between the total scores assigned by the supervising dentist and the dental hygienist, and between those assigned by the supervising dentist and receptionist, among the four evaluated categories. The scores for professionalism and communication were significantly higher than those for the other categories. Conclusion: The evaluation scores assigned by the supervising dentists and the other evaluators were all correlated. The trainee dentists in our study obtained the highest scores in the professionalism and communication categories (these are deemed especially important in medicine). We were also able to reveal different evaluation characteristics by each evaluator. Future research should determine how trainee dentists use the feedback obtained by this type of competence evaluation and the changes that they make as a result of it.