Designing a Tool to Assess Professionalism among Dental Students

Objectives: Professionalism is essential to a strong and trusted patient-doctor relationship, which is believed to potentially enhance patient compliance and treatment outcomes. The purpose of our study was to develop and conduct a psychometric analysis of an assessment tool to evaluate the professional behavior of dental students. Materials and Methods: The study was performed in the School of Dentistry, Tehran University of Medical Sciences. After providing a pool of various criteria to assess professionalism, an expert panel prepared the primary version of the tool. The tool was set in a questionnaire frame to explore the significance level and evaluation feasibility of each criterion. The questionnaire was completed by tutors of the “Medical Ethics” course (n=6). After necessary revisions, face and content validity were evaluated by giving the checklist to eight experienced dental educators to determine the relevance, clarity, and simplicity of the questions. In the second stage, the final checklist (37 items) was given to dental educators to evaluate twenty students. To assess the reliability of this checklist, at least two professors evaluated each student, and weighted-κ was calculated. Minor revisions were made based on the received feedback. Results: According to our data, the total validity of the tool (S-CVI) was 100%. For all items except one, the weighted-κ coefficient was ≥ 0.5, indicating sufficient reliability for these items. Conclusion: Despite the limitations of the present study, the designed tool to evaluate professionalism among dental students in different clinical departments seems to be both valid and reliable.