Abstract
Objectives: This study evaluated the self-assessed clinical skills of dental graduates of an Iranian dental school.
Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 156 general dentists graduated from the School of Dentistry of Ahvaz Jundishapur University during 2020-2023. A standard researcher-designed questionnaire was used for self-assessment of the acquired clinical skills of graduates after assessing and confirming its optimal validity and reliability. Data were analyzed by the Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis, and Freidman tests and Spearman’s correlation coefficient (alpha=0.05).
Results: The mean age of the participants was 26.85 years. The acquired mean total clinical skills score was 3.05. A significant difference was found among the domain scores acquired by the participants (P<0.001), such that the highest scores were acquired in the field of endodontics (3.30), followed by oral and maxillofacial surgery (3.21), pediatric dentistry (3.18), oral radiology (3.18), restorative dentistry (3.13), oral medicine (3.09), periodontology (3.01), prosthodontics (2.87), and orthodontics (2.36). The mean scores of the participants were higher than average in all fields. A significant difference was found in the mean total score based on graduation year (P<0.001). The total mean score had a significant direct correlation with age (P<0.001). The mean scores of male graduates in prosthodontics and oral and maxillofacial surgery were higher than those of female graduates (P<0.05).
Conclusion: The mean self-assessed total clinical skills score was higher than average in all fields, and was significantly correlated with age. The highest and the lowest scores were acquired in endodontics/oral and maxillofacial surgery and orthodontics/prosthodontics domains, respectively.