A Multimedia Patient Simulation for Teaching and Assessing Endodontic Diagnosis
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Teaching and assessing diagnostic skills are difficult due to relatively small numbers of total clinical experiences and a shortage of clinical faculty. Patient simulations could help teach and assess diagnosis by displaying a welldefined diagnostic task, then providing informative feedback and opportunities for repetition and correction of errors. This report describes the development and initial evaluation of SimEndo I, a multimedia patient simulation program that could be used for teaching or assessing endodontic diagnosis. Students interact with a graphical interface that has four pulldown menus and related submenus. In response to student requests, the program presents patient information. Scoring is based on diagnosis of each case by endodontists. Pilot testing with seventyfour junior dental students identified numerous needed improvements to the user interface program. A multischool field test of the interface program using three patient cases addressed three research questions: 1) How did the field test students evaluate SimEndo I? Overall mean evaluation was 8.1 on a 0 to 10 scale; 2) How many cases are needed to generate a reproducible diagnostic proficiency score for an individual student using the Rimoldi scoring procedure? Mean diagnostic proficiency scores by case ranged from .27 to .40 on a 0 to 1 scale; five cases would produce a score with a 0.80 reliability coefficient; and 3) Did students accurately diagnose each case? Mean correct diagnosis scores by case ranged from .54 to .78 on a 0 to 1 scale. We conclude that multimedia patient simulations offer a promising alternative for teaching and assessing student diagnostic skills.
