Agreement between two raters' evaluation for integrated Traditional Prosthodontic Practical Exam with Directly Observed Procedural Skills in Egypt

Abstract

PURPOSE: It aimed to determine the agreement between two raters evaluating students at prosthodontic clinical practical exam integrated with directly observed procedural skills (DOPS). METHODS: A sample of 76 students was monitored by two raters to evaluate the process and the final registered maxillomandibular relation for completely edentulous patient in Mansoura Dental School, Egypt at practical exam of the Bachelor students on May 15, till June 28, 2017. Each registered relation was evaluated from total 60 marks subdivided to three score-categories: occlusal plane orientation (OPO), vertical dimension registration (VDR), and centric relation registration (CRR). The marks of each category included mark of DOPS. The marks of OPO and VDR for both raters were compared by graph method to measure reliability using the Bland and Altman analysis. The reliability of CRR marks was evaluated by Krippendorff's alpha ratio. RESULTS: The results revealed similarity between raters for OPO (mean = 18.1) and closes of limits of agreement (0.73 and -0.78). For VDR, there were closeness of means (mean= 17.4 and 17.1 for examiner 1 and 2 respectively); with limits of agreement (2.7and-2.2). There was a strong correlation (Krippendorff's alpha ratio= 0.92; 95% CI [0.79-0.99]) among raters at evaluating CRR. CONCLUSION: The two raters' evaluation of clinical traditional practical exam integrated with directly observed procedural skills revealed not to be different to evaluate candidate at the end of the clinical prosthodontic course. The limits of agreement between raters would be optimum at exclusion subjective evaluation parameters and complicated cases from examination procedures.