Association for Dental Education in Europe

Learning together to improve oral health and quality of life

Performance Assessment of Clinical Skills (PACS); an overview and critical analysis.

Monday, 9th September 2024 - 16:30 to 18:00
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Timezone: 

CEST (Brussels Time)

Duration: 

90 Minutes

Venue: 

HP4

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Session synopsis: 
To enable delegates to explore different methods of undertaking Performance Assessment of Clinical Skills (PACs) in dentistry, through sharing of experience, discussing advantages and disadvantages, problems and pitfalls with common PACS.

By sharing PACS design processes from a variety of dental institutions, the presenters aim to support colleagues looking to make their PACs more reliable and valid. A questionnaire will be sent out in advance of the session and remain live throughout the session/conference.

This session will be delivered through a combination of short lectures, discussion and breakouts, as per the session outline.

Programme: 
16:30 Welcome and introductions
16:35 Overview of PACS
16:50 The OSCE journey
17:05 Pitches / Introduction of breakouts
17:20 Breakout sessions – sharing experiences of using PACs in dentistry
17:50 Closing remarks
Speakers: 

Charlotte Emmanuel

Senior Clinical Lecturer/Honorary Consultant in Oral Surgery. Director of Assessment and Feedback
Cardiff University, UK

Charlotte began her journey educating dental students, both clinical and didactic teaching in oral surgery in 2004.  During this time, she has led and developed a number of assessments both for undergraduate and postgraduate students. She was appointed to the role of Director of Assessment and Feedback in 2019 and was able to develop new methods for assessments, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic for both undergraduate and postgraduate students in dentistry and dental therapy and hygiene. Covid-19 highlighted and pushed the development of methods to record and assess student’s capabilities to ensure Cardiff University could demonstrate the safe beginner, whereby she introduced a capability portfolio to record student clinical progress, this also enabled her to review current work-based assessments to demonstrate competency in key areas.

Sarah Rolland

Senior Lecturer / Honorary Consultant in Orthodontics. Director of Assessment.
Newcastle University, UK

Sarah Rolland has worked in dental education for over 20 years, during which time she has fostered an interest in dental assessment and held the position of Director of Assessment at Newcastle Dental School (UK) for the last 6 years.  Sarah has developed and run the year 3 dental student OSCE examination, updating standard setting methods and moving to a system of sequential testing. She has been involved in the development of a new final year MOSLER examination (Multiple Observed Structured Long Examination Record), a practical assessment method that is used in medicine, but has not been widely used in dental education. Hugely enthusiastic for dental assessment, with a passion for ensuring assessments are valid, reliable and authentic Sarah enjoys working with others and looks forward to developing collaborative learning around the important and evolving area of practical assessments in dental education.

Clare McNally

University of Melbourne, Australia
Academic Lead for Assessment and Evaluation.

Clare McNally is an Associate Professor of Oral Health and the Academic Lead for Assessment and Evaluation at the Melbourne Dental School. Clare is a change agent, responsible for assessment reform as part of the MDS25 curriculum redesign.

By developing a programmatic approach to assessment and introducing an entrustable professional activity framework, Clare will ensure the Melbourne Dental School (MDS) is a global leader in dental education and assessment.
Clare is also the Bachelor of Oral Health final year coordinator. This is a work-integrated learning (WIL) year where students are out on clinical placements. Clare is focused on ensuring they remain connected as a community of learners despite not being on-site together at the University.
Clare's PhD (Medicine) at the University of Adelaide explored the relationship between oral health and systemic health in hospitalised older people. She currently works for Dental Health Services Victoria in the Oral Medicine Department helping patients with significant mucosal diseases prevent common dental conditions. She will be expanding her research in this area in 2024.

Heather Lundbeck

Clinical Lecturer in Paediatric Dentistry. OSCE Lead.
Cardiff University, UK

Heather has have worked in dental education for 4 years, both in the UK and in New Zealand and has participated in formative and summative assessments regularly. On joining the team at Cardiff University in 2021 Heather took on the role of pre-clinical OSCE lead for dental, hygiene and therapy students at Cardiff University. After engaging with the literature and attending courses she began revising the practical assessments within the dental school. To date Heather has modified the pre-clinical OSCE to improve its validity and reliability, using post hoc analysis to review any changes made and is currently undertaking a review of how we assess all practical skills before the students transition to treating patients. Heather contributes to the college OSCE group at Cardiff University which spans the medical, optometry, physiotherapy, nursing and dental schools. Heather believes collaboration and sharing of practice is imperative to identifying best practice and looks forward to working with colleagues to create a forum which has a focus on learning, support and a desire to deliver valid and reliable assessments within dentistry.

Learning Outcomes: 

By the end of the session, delegates will:

  1. Have insight into the common methods of PACS used in dentistry globally;
  2. Be able to compare use of PACS in dentistry via a collaborative forum by sharing of experiences;
  3. Be able to discuss the common methods to maximise the validity, reliability, defensibility and reproducibility of assessment delivery.
Call for Abstracts: 

A questionnaire will be sent out in advance of the session and remain live throughout the session/conference.

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