# Social skills in future dental students – a project report

## TL;DR

This study explores the social skills important for dental students and how best to measure them, highlighting differences in stakeholder priorities.

## Contribution

The project identifies stakeholder-prioritized social skills and evaluates the effectiveness of assessment methods like SJT and MMIs in dental education.

## Key findings

- Dental lecturers and students prioritize emotional resilience and stress management over patient-related behaviors.
- Patients and dentists emphasize helpfulness and caring conduct during treatment.
- Multiple Mini Interviews (MMIs) are found to be more effective than Situational Judgment Tests (SJT) for assessing complex social skills.

## Abstract

The doctor-patient interaction is essential for successfull dental treatment. Although it is possible to consider social skills during student selection, these are rarely taken into account. The described project aims to identify and evaluate the social skills deemed necessary by various stakeholders and to assess whether these skills can be effectively measured using a Situational Judgment Test (SJT).

The project involved conducting interviews with stakeholders (lecturers, students, patients, practicing dentists) to identify relevant social skills. This was followed by a Delphi survey to evaluate the importance of these skills. Additionally, the SJT was examined for its suitability in the context of dental medicine, and various methods for reliably measuring the identified skills were assessed.

Dental lecturers and students consider emotional resilience, particularly stress management, to be especially important during dental studies, while patient-related behaviors are of lesser priority – possibly due to the constraints of the academic environment. In contrast, patients and dentists emphasize the importance of helpfulness and caring conduct during treatment.

Our research highlights the need to strengthen social skills in dental education. Although the SJT from general medicine is also suitable for dental studies, Multiple Mini Interviews (MMIs) are a more effective method for capturing complex skills, such as behavioral flexibility.