Development and validation of checklists for standardized patients in dental education for special care health needs patients

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Traditionally, checklists or evaluation templates have been utilized to assess psychological and health-related issues in fields like psychology and pediatrics. Currently, their use has expanded, particularly in medical research and healthcare evaluation. This study aims to develop and validate checklists for standardized patient use in the subject " Special Care Health Needs patients" within the Dentistry Degree program, ensuring international applicability whenever clinical simulation is employed. MATERIAL AND METHOD: Six different scenarios were developed for student evaluation. Along with each scenario, a script was also created for the simulated participant or the instructor voicing the simulator. An evaluation template was designed for each clinical scenario. Once the scenarios and checklists were designed, 11 experts in the field of Special Care Health Needs Patients from six different universities were provided with a file for each simulation scenario, which they had to complete. The data collected from the validation of the evaluation templates by the expert panel were sent to the Statistical Support Section (SAE) of the University of Murcia. Data analysis was performed using R version 4.0.3. RESULTS: The level of agreement among experts regarding the importance and scoring of items in six clinical evaluation templates was analyzed. Most results were statistically significant (p < 0.05), except for the physical examination dimension in several templates, likely due to the low number of items. Overall, high concordance was observed across competency dimensions, particularly in communication. CONCLUSIONS: The positive statistical outcomes observed in our implementation of these checklists highlight their potential not only to assess students' clinical behavior with consistency but also to inform and refine educational strategies. The adoption of a standardized, rigorous approach to checklist development-such as the one applied in this study-may contribute significantly to the advancement of performance evaluation in healthcare education, promoting both learner competency and patient-centered care.