An evaluation of the clinical assessment system used in the Oral Health programme at UWC (2009-2011)

Objectives: To determine whether there is an association between the competency based score (CBS) and the clinical examination score (CE) for each student, and whether these scores changed over the academic year

Methods: The sample included 2^nd (n=41) and 3^rd (n=30) year oral hygiene students. All 2^nd and 3^rd year student clinical assessment records for the period 2009-2011 were analysed using regression analysis and paired t-tests. The CBS scores for each term were compared with the CE scores for that term, as well as for any trends over time.

Results: The association between the CBS and CE scores for the 2^nd year class was weak (R²=0.002) but improved slightly to R²=0.16 over the course or the academic year. Conversely, the association between the CBS and CE scores for the 3^rd years was also weak but decreased over the academic year (R²=0.19 decreasing to R²=0.03).
When analysed separately, both the CBS and the CE scores improved over the course of the year. For the 2^nd years only the improvement in the CBS was statistically significant (p=0.0006) whereas for the 3^rd years, only the improvement of the CE score was statistically significant (p=0.0025).

Conclusions: Although both the competency based score (CBS) and the clinical examinations (CE) score increased during the academic year, the competency-based assessment was not a good predictor of the mark obtained in the clinical examination.