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

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.

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.