An Examination of the Post-graduate Dental Clinical Competency Evaluation at the End of Clinical Training for Professionalism in Dental Education

In the current post-graduate dental clinical training program, various clinical competency evaluation methods have been reported based on a nationwide dental university survey, in an attempt to advance and improve the evaluation methods. However, the point has not yet been reached for establishing clear evaluation standards and task items for a clinical competency evaluation for the overall evaluation at the end of training. Moreover, in post-graduate dental clinical training, multiple training programs are established. Because the same examination is conducted among trainees completing different programs, the evaluation method must be appropriate and standardized, taking into account differences in training content. However, no reports exist regarding an investigation of the evaluation. In the present study, we evaluated the post-graduate dental clinical competency examination as a pilot study with the objective of establishing a clinical competency evaluation for professionalism in dental education. An examination was conducted among clinical dental trainees at the end of their clinical training, based on their programs. The evaluation items included skill examinations as clinical training competency achievement confirmation testing. As a control, an evaluation on knowledge was included among the analysis items. The mean evaluation results for the skill examinations by program indicated no significant differences between programs. In the knowledge examination, the mean evaluation results in one program(clinical training in combined- and cooperative-type facilities)was significantly higher compared with the other programs(p＜0.01). Differences in difficulty level were observed in the evaluation items according to program(p＜0.05, ＜0.01). These results suggest that no significant differences between training programs were found in the scores, although there was a significant between programs in the knowledge evaluation. Therefore, it is considered necessary to establish an appropriate and standardized post-graduate dental clinical competency evaluation by reviewing the method of comparison between programs and by further reducing the differences in difficulty between tasks.