Authors : Elaheh Vahid Dastjerdie, Abolfazl Saboury, Mina Mahdian and Mohammad Javad Khahrazi Fard
Abstract: Assessment of clinical skills has a central role in dental education. OSCE has been introduced as an effective method to provide a reliable assessment in this regard. This study aimed to describe lecturer’s attitude and perceptions toward the annual OSCE implemented in an Iranian dental school. Faculty member’s opinions from 10 departments of Dental School, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Iran were collected after the winter OSCE in 2010 using a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of 8 statements and the faculty members were asked to rate them from strongly agree to strongly disagree in Likert's scale. Data were retrieved and the frequency of responses were calculated and subjected to analysis using SPSS 16. The response rate was 67.1%. The overall attitude of the faculty members were positive toward the exam and did not show statistically significant difference between departments (p = 0.163). About 84.4% of the lecturers found OSCE a time consuming method nevertheless, 71.3% admitted that bias is significantly reduced in this method of evaluation. Furthermore, 94.2% of the faculty members confirmed the necessity of education and standardization of the examiner in designing a reliable OSCE. Although, OSCE is a time consuming and costly method, if designed and implemented by a group of professional and well educated staff, it is a reliable method to assess the clinical skills and capabilities of dental students.
Elaheh Vahid Dastjerdie, Abolfazl Saboury, Mina Mahdian and Mohammad Javad Khahrazi Fard, 2010. Assessment of Iranian Dental Lecturers Attitude and Perspectives Toward Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE). Research Journal of Biological Sciences, 5: 241-245.