Abstract

Introduction. The School of Dentistry of the Universidad de Chile has done an objective structured clinical evaluation centered on communicative competencies that a student should have for the proper development of a clinical interview. Aim. To describe the perception of achievement, in the matter of communicative and psychosocial competencies in students of second grade acting in this activity, on the career of dentistry at Universidad de Chile. Subjects and methods. This is a non-experimental, cross-sectional, descriptive study, with a purposive sampling of 32 students. The simulated patients and the group of pairs evaluated the achievement of 32 students on the activity. Descriptive analysis was done through frequency tables. In addition, the di erence on perception of achievement between simulated patient and group of pairs was evaluated through chi-squared test. Results. The students did not achieve a satisfactory performance when socioemotional attributes were probed, neither when verifying patient’s understanding about dentist’s indications. The perception of simulated patients and observer pairs disagrees on almost all attributes assessed, excepting the kindness of the performing student. Conclusions. Simulated patients are more stringent when they evaluate communicative and psychosocial abilities of the students, contrasting with the group of pairs. Psychosocial and communicative attributes are still a weakness on dentist’s preparation.