Dental Students’ Self-efficacy of Core Evaluation Factors for Each Evaluation Area of Dental National Board Examination in Korea

Abstract

This study aimed to explore the self-efficacy of dental students in the evaluation areas of practical examination of the Dental National Board Examination, which will be first introduced to 2022 graduates. In this study, 22 evaluation areas of practical ex-amination and their core evaluation elements of each evaluation area were converted into a 5-point Likert scale questionnaire to investigate the self-efficacy of dental students. Statistical data analysis using SPSS was conducted to compare various student’s characteristics (α=0.05): (a) student's t-test for the gender, admission type, grade, and D3 students’ direct patient care experience in each evaluation area and (b) one-way ANOVA for the age and number of patients treated by D4 students. The results are as follows: (a) D4 students showed statistically higher scores than D3 students in 20 evaluation areas, (b) D4 students had a full direct patient care experience in 11 evaluation areas, (c) There were significant differences in five evaluation areas according to the D4’s direct patient care experience, and (d) D4 students showed low self-efficacy in three evaluation areas compared to the overall average even they have performed their direct patient care. The findings of this study indicated that it is necessary to not only enhance the direct patient care experience of predoctoral students, but also provide more additional educational experience according to the treatment area. This study suggests that the clinical practice of dental students’ needs to be designed to provide more appropriate intervention, evaluation, and feedback, rather than considering only the quantitative increase in direct patientcare experience.