Assessment of communication and physical exam skills: A comparison of students, faculty and standardized patients

Purpose/objectives The objective of this retrospective study was twofold: it aimed to investigate dental students’ communication and physical exam self‐assessment skills by comparing students’ self‐evaluations with those completed by faculty and standardized patients (SPs). Second, it aimed to compare faculty and SPs assessment of students’ communication skills. Methods At the end of their first year of training, students (n = 127), participated in one SP encounter about an initial dental consultation. Students completed self‐assessment before receiving feedback from faculty (n = 19) and SPs (n = 19). The data source included evaluation forms submitted by students, faculty and SPs. The Wilcoxon signed rank test was used to compare the overall scores between groups. Agreement between evaluations items were analyzed with McNemar's test (p