I would like to offer a dissenting opinion regarding 64H [a resolution passed by the 2000 ADA House of Delegates] that proposes the elimination of the human patient in clinical licensure examinations.
I have just retired from the Central Regional Dental Testing Service, or CRDTS, after 24 years of service as an examiner. Never in my experience have I known any candidate to fail because of examiner prejudice. These are completely anonymous tests. We, as examiners, do not know the candidate or his or her school or class standing.
All CRDTS examiners go through continual training so that we grade all procedures "generically," putting aside any special techniques we may have been taught at our individual dental schools.
To remove the live patient from the exam process would be a serious mistake. Why not have dental students train on manikins all four years instead of just two years? Why do we need to take an actual road-driving test to get a license? Just let the kids pass on an arcade game. These exam protocols are in place to help protect the public.
The argument that educators should be able to judge competency just doesn’t hold water. Dental school administrators are under political and legal pressure to graduate students who are not as yet ready to treat patients in the outside world.
Let me cite an example. In the periodontal portion of the exam, the candidate indicates where he or she has detected calculus. One or more examiners verify this, and the candidate then proceeds to remove the calculus, needing only approximately 75 percent accuracy on the areas selected to pass. In some instances, this accuracy has fallen below 50 percent. Should the ADA, or we as practicing dentists, consider this to be minimal competency to practice our profession?
Until a better method of measuring competency is designed, let’s not be bashing a tried and proven system. Tell [students] to quit whining, complete their education, pass the exam (as they certainly should be able to, if they and their school have done the job properly) and then practice our great profession.
