Criteria Referenced Continuous Assessment in the Clinical Setting

Many methods of clinical assessment are not appropriate to the overall culture of a learning institution and more specifically to learning of clinical skills in dentistry. Objectives: The purpose of this report is to describe the rationale for developing Continuous Clinical Assessment with clear and explicit criteria to support learning of clinical skills in dentistry. Previous traditional methods of assessment resulted in the pre-graduate students receiving an assessment mark by clinical tutors at the end of a period in the dental clinical setting. This type of assessment is one sided, subjective, lacks validity and reliability and offers no feedback to the student on a continuous basis and therefore does little to enhance the learning process. Methods: A system of Continuous Clinical Assessment, which is criteria referenced, and delivers gives immediate feedback on student performance was developed. 98 BChD IV and V students and 17 clinical tutors were trained to use the same criteria to assess the students' competency for basic restorative procedures in dentistry. Results: The statistical analysis of results, in a comparative study, between tutor and student assessment for BChD IV and BChD V reveals significant Spearman Correlation Coefficients: BChD IV = 0.882, BChD V = 0.927 (p< 0.05). There was no statistical significant difference between student and tutor assessments. Conclusions: Criteria referenced clinical assessment in restorative dentistry causes students to perform more competently. Clinical tutors are offering more advice, giving less guidance and helping few students to complete procedures competently.