Pre-clinal Operative: Tough Grading!

[FutureDent020]

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I wanted to see if other students felt their instructors graded preclinical operative incredibly tough. Ours is a 6 credit class with 92-100 A, 85-92 B, 77-84 C, 76-0 F. However, one tiny mistake and it knocks us straight down from an A to a mid B. Just did a class V prep on #8 and everything was perfect except it extended about 1/8-1/4 mm insciso-gingivally above 2 mm. I mean it barely broke the 2mm black mark on the probe. And the only reason it did was because of the diverging walls. It took me from a perfect score to a 89. It would be different if I blew it out, but it was a just tiny bit larger than ideal. I just feel like some of these professors have too easy of a time pointing out what is not perfect. All this also makes me feel that pre-clinical operative should be P/F. Just wanted to hear about other D-1's experiences.

 

[DrJeff]

I wanted to see if other students felt their instructors graded preclinical operative incredibly tough. Ours is a 6 credit class with 92-100 A, 85-92 B, 77-84 C, 76-0 F. However, one tiny mistake and it knocks us straight down from an A to a mid B. Just did a class V prep on #8 and everything was perfect except it extended about 1/8-1/4 mm insciso-gingivally above 2 mm. I mean it barely broke the 2mm black mark on the probe. And the only reason it did was because of the diverging walls. It took me from a perfect score to a 89. It would be different if I blew it out, but it was a just tiny bit larger than ideal. I just feel like some of these professors have too easy of a time pointing out what is not perfect. All this also makes me feel that pre-clinical operative should be P/F. Just wanted to hear about other D-1's experiences.

If you don't strive for perfection on a "tooth" where you're not chasing decay (which ultimately dictates what the majority of your prep will look like in the clinical world), then chances are you'll be making others errors, at the expense of real tooth structure in the future. Learning the core fundamentals of restorative dentistry is key, since if you stray too far from them, then often the results you get longterm will end up with you having to redo lots of your work 😱

 

[DrReo]

I wanted to see if other students felt their instructors graded preclinical operative incredibly tough. Ours is a 6 credit class with 92-100 A, 85-92 B, 77-84 C, 76-0 F. However, one tiny mistake and it knocks us straight down from an A to a mid B. Just did a class V prep on #8 and everything was perfect except it extended about 1/8-1/4 mm insciso-gingivally above 2 mm. I mean it barely broke the 2mm black mark on the probe. And the only reason it did was because of the diverging walls. It took me from a perfect score to a 89. It would be different if I blew it out, but it was a just tiny bit larger than ideal. I just feel like some of these professors have too easy of a time pointing out what is not perfect. All this also makes me feel that pre-clinical operative should be P/F. Just wanted to hear about other D-1's experiences.

I think a lot of students have a misconception about grades that are given, I mean earned. When one deviates from the expected criteria,not the optimal dimensions, why should they be rewarded with the same grade as those who had the exact dimensions?

Operative is tough because a lot of time there is only 6, 8 or up to 12 points on practicals and having a slight deviation is critical to your grade, but not your learning experience.

 

[FutureDent020]

Yea, I see exactly where you both are coming from. I guess I am more frustrated that while my hand skills are good and have improven a whole lot over the year, an A still seems almost out of reach. Because perfection, down to micrometers (yes, I have heard professors say take a couple micrometers off) seems unattainable. The highest grade on a prep in our class this year was a 98. So maybe perfection is unattainable at such a level of detail.
And yea, the total points is 9, 3 points for 3 sections.

 

[rockclock]

Yea, I see exactly where you both are coming from. I guess I am more frustrated that while my hand skills are good and have improven a whole lot over the year, an A still seems almost out of reach. Because perfection, down to micrometers (yes, I have heard professors say take a couple micrometers off) seems unattainable. The highest grade on a prep in our class this year was a 98. So maybe perfection is unattainable at such a level of detail.
And yea, the total points is 9, 3 points for 3 sections.

i'm just a pre-dent here, but micrometer talk has got to be complete bull****, right? (not saying you're making it up OP, just saying that those professors have a pretty inflated notion of what they do.)

 

[GTFOOMICT]

I wanted to see if other students felt their instructors graded preclinical operative incredibly tough. Ours is a 6 credit class with 92-100 A, 85-92 B, 77-84 C, 76-0 F. However, one tiny mistake and it knocks us straight down from an A to a mid B. Just did a class V prep on #8 and everything was perfect except it extended about 1/8-1/4 mm insciso-gingivally above 2 mm. I mean it barely broke the 2mm black mark on the probe. And the only reason it did was because of the diverging walls. It took me from a perfect score to a 89. It would be different if I blew it out, but it was a just tiny bit larger than ideal. I just feel like some of these professors have too easy of a time pointing out what is not perfect. All this also makes me feel that pre-clinical operative should be P/F. Just wanted to hear about other D-1's experiences.

Sounds like your grading is easy if you actually thought you had a chance at a 100. It's probably the same at every school. BS objective grades that are backed up by grading schemes that assign tremendous value to measurements using instruments far beyond their resolution.

But it's worth it. Get to clinic and you'll not worry about your hands, only clinical concepts and modifications from the ideal.

I never had a faculty say 'your pulpal depth is wrong, take off a micrometer'. That would be such BS. I did have some say 'take a micrometer off to smooth things out'. The actual 1 micrometer is not important but the idea of 'dusting' away tooth structure was conveyed.

 

[UBDent19]

Are these courses not curved? Do most of the students end up getting Bs, Cs and Fs?

 

[FutureDent020]

i'm just a pre-dent here, but micrometer talk has got to be complete bull****, right? (not saying you're making it up OP, just saying that those professors have a pretty inflated notion of what they do.)

When it comes to grades on preps, no I have not heard micrometers. But when it comes to daily evaluations on preps, yes they will say shave a couple micrometers off this. And they usually reference buccal and lingual wall clearance on class II's.

 

[dragonteeth]

The point of those exercises (beyond the obvious) is to train you to become as critical of your own work as they are, if not more so. If you cant be exact on a model sitting on a bench with an hour to work and plenty of light, how can you ever hope to be anywhere close in a dark, dank mouth on a maxillary (translate upside down) tooth connected a 6 year old who is scared, fidgity, and really needs to pee?

As for the question of microns - well yeah in the real world we do work in microns all the time. Fit tolerance of a well made crown? 25 microns. Diameter of the sutures I used to secure my connective tissue graft this week? 50 microns. Size of hole needed for S mutans to get under your finely crafted posterior composite? 10 microns.

Not trying to be nasty at all, but if you arent willing to drive yourself to perfection measured in microns, please change your major. Lord knows we have enough docs out there satisfied with mediocrity as long as their boat payment is made. But if you can find that type A++ perfectionist personality inside of you and allow it to blossom...well then welcome to the profession.

 

[FutureDent020]

Are these courses not curved? Do most of the students end up getting Bs, Cs and Fs?

Last years class said about 13 after the curve /80 made A's. Only a couple had to remediate. And they do curve it 1-2 pts. usually. Right now, I know people who make A's in waxing, but haven't heard anyone who has a solid A in operative.

 

[FutureDent020]

The point of those exercises (beyond the obvious) is to train you to become as critical of your own work as they are, if not more so. If you cant be exact on a model sitting on a bench with an hour to work and plenty of light, how can you ever hope to be anywhere close in a dark, dank mouth on a maxillary (translate upside down) tooth connected a 6 year old who is scared, fidgity, and really needs to pee?

As for the question of microns - well yeah in the real world we do work in microns all the time. Fit tolerance of a well made crown? 25 microns. Diameter of the sutures I used to secure my connective tissue graft this week? 50 microns. Size of hole needed for S mutans to get under your finely crafted posterior composite? 10 microns.

Not trying to be nasty at all, but if you arent willing to drive yourself to perfection measured in microns, please change your major. Lord knows we have enough docs out there satisfied with mediocrity as long as their boat payment is made. But if you can find that type A++ perfectionist personality inside of you and allow it to blossom...well then welcome to the profession.

I think people are starting to stray from the topic. Trust me, we ALL strive for perfection in operative. Didactic courses are another story. What frustrates us is, as much as we practice, and as hard as we try for perfection, it doesn't seem attainable. I understand that it's important that we learn from our mistakes and take them seriously. We all do. It just seems like every professor has a different perception of what a perfect prep is. What one professor may deem great, another will point out several problems. So it's not that we don't strive to be perfect, we just don't know how to get there!

 

[Vicviper]

In most of our pre-clinical classes, it's considered near impossible to get a perfect score on a practical, and you only are able to get an A if you have a clear mastery of the procedure, as in, the course director would be able to use yours as the example the next year (understanding that it's not a pefect example). I know that when I was in the B range, I thought the classes should have been pass fail, but when I was able to step it up to the A range in my pre-operative classes, when instructors are holding the standard so high, you really feel a sense of accomplishment.

We also have a rule in our classes, the "Big Brother Rule," where you've just got to do work to the person who's grading you. I've had it where my bench instructor isn't going to be the one grading, and so I've had to adjust a little bit to the preference of the course director, but a quality prep is still a quality prep.

Don't worry, I know it's frustrating, but you'll do just fine!

 

[Mackchops]

Our instructor laid out in our syllabus that the highest grade you could get on an operative practical was a 95 because "only God is perfect"...

Dentistry is like a fraternity and dental school is like four years of hazing.

 

[GTFOOMICT]

I can't wait until this thing grades preps..........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEnf-KJj3R0

 

[xhamburgersamx]

It's almost impossible to get a 100% on any our practical exams. In fact for posterior fixed, the average on every practical is around 60%.

 

[ducksfly]

devil's advocate questions: is the purpose of dent school to get A's or to become a fantastic clinician? should the kid who can do exactly 2mm get a better grade than the kid who does 2.25mm? what if that quarter mm had been on the floor of a class 1 or 2 and had caused a pulpal perf? would you push yourself as hard (ie. would you end up being as good with a handpiece) if they gave you a 1mm IG margin of error?
my personal response: heck yeah this stuff can be tough, only to made more difficult by goofy, inconsistent profs who i often think/know are not as good with a handpiece as i am. like some prev poster said, its often akin to hazing. just try to be perfect. hard for some ******ed prof to argue that a 2mm (exactly) prep isn't 2mm.

 

[DrReo]

devil's advocate questions: is the purpose of dent school to get A's or to become a fantastic clinician? should the kid who can do exactly 2mm get a better grade than the kid who does 2.25mm? what if that quarter mm had been on the floor of a class 1 or 2 and had caused a pulpal perf? would you push yourself as hard (ie. would you end up being as good with a handpiece) if they gave you a 1mm IG margin of error?
my personal response: heck yeah this stuff can be tough, only to made more difficult by goofy, inconsistent profs who i often think/know are not as good with a handpiece as i am. like some prev poster said, its often akin to hazing. just try to be perfect. hard for some ******ed prof to argue that a 2mm (exactly) prep isn't 2mm.

Or that there is 6, 8 or 10 degrees taper on a preparation. 😀

 

[preOMFS]

i'm just a pre-dent here, but micrometer talk has got to be complete bull****, right? (not saying you're making it up OP, just saying that those professors have a pretty inflated notion of what they do.)

I think the OP may have been exaggerating and/or referring to tenths of a millimeter, which is the scale preps are typically measured on.

 

[gryffindor]

devil's advocate questions: is the purpose of dent school to get A's or to become a fantastic clinician? should the kid who can do exactly 2mm get a better grade than the kid who does 2.25mm? what if that quarter mm had been on the floor of a class 1 or 2 and had caused a pulpal perf? would you push yourself as hard (ie. would you end up being as good with a handpiece) if they gave you a 1mm IG margin of error?
my personal response: heck yeah this stuff can be tough, only to made more difficult by goofy, inconsistent profs who i often think/know are not as good with a handpiece as i am. like some prev poster said, its often akin to hazing. just try to be perfect. hard for some ******ed prof to argue that a 2mm (exactly) prep isn't 2mm.

The purpose is to get an A if you want to rank high and be an oral surgeon where you'll never be prepping anything at a 0.2 mm level.

Operative had to be the most subjective class I took. I still won't forget that I missed a B in Operative because even after all the subjective grading, it came down to the fact that I had picked the supposedly wrong clamp for my rubber dam.

 

[FutureDent020]

The purpose is to get an A if you want to rank high and be an oral surgeon where you'll never be prepping anything at a 0.2 mm level.

Operative had to be the most subjective class I took. I still won't forget that I missed a B in Operative because even after all the subjective grading, it came down to the fact that I had picked the supposedly wrong clamp for my rubber dam.

That's kind of the dilemma in our class right now. I don't care to specialize, so I can brush it off, but a handful of students who want to be Ortho or OMFS are flirting with C's in the class (86-84) and have made A's in everything else, even waxing. And based on our grading criteria that range is; "acceptable: could be improved with minor changes". I don't think what I have quoted deserves 6 credits of a 2.0.

 

[cresophene]

The purpose is to get an A if you want to rank high and be an oral surgeon where you'll never be prepping anything at a 0.2 mm level.

Operative had to be the most subjective class I took. I still won't forget that I missed a B in Operative because even after all the subjective grading, it came down to the fact that I had picked the supposedly wrong clamp for my rubber dam.

I had a similar situation. I allegedly nicked the tooth next door...when infact I did not.

 

[dentalWorks]

That's kind of the dilemma in our class right now. I don't care to specialize, so I can brush it off, but a handful of students who want to be Ortho or OMFS are flirting with C's in the class (86-84) and have made A's in everything else, even waxing. And based on our grading criteria that range is; "acceptable: could be improved with minor changes". I don't think what I have quoted deserves 6 credits of a 2.0.

Yeh... this would be frustrating... but they can still recover from a few Cs right?

 

[FutureDent020]

I had a similar situation. I allegedly nicked the tooth next door...when infact I did not.

Oh yea, they love this stuff. Damage to them is something as simple as small scratch on the plastic from a marginal trimmer / hatchet.

Yeh... this would be frustrating... but they can still recover from a few Cs right?

You would think so, but at the moment a C in a 6 credit course is pretty discouraging.

 

[UBDent19]

I still won't forget that I missed a B in Operative because even after all the subjective grading, it came down to the fact that I had picked the supposedly wrong clamp for my rubber dam.

So Buffalo's operative course is that tough as well?

 

[browncrack]

The important thing to remember about working on plastic is that it doesn't move, doesnt' drool, doesn't need anesthetic, and doesn't need to rest. The more I've done, the more I realize that the tooth prep is usually the easy part. Still, preclinic grading is very, very frustrating to deal with because the faculty must have something to evaluate. Normally, people don't work on healthy teeth, people work on nasty looking and smelling teeth. Plastic teeth start as close to ideal as you can get.

 

[Vicviper]

Oh yea, they love this stuff. Damage to them is something as simple as small scratch on the plastic from a marginal trimmer / hatchet.

Yeah, this is always really irritating! The biggest tip I give to the first years is to use composite finishing strips - you can take those scratches right off! 😀

 

[rockclock]

I think the OP may have been exaggerating and/or referring to tenths of a millimeter, which is the scale preps are typically measured on.

yes, thank you. i could see if "take a few microns off of that" was just slang for a light polish/sand/whatever the correct verbage would be/etc. but anything specifically stated in micrometers would just show that you have no sense for what a micron is.

 

[villedmd]

Last years class said about 13 after the curve /80 made A's. Only a couple had to remediate. And they do curve it 1-2 pts. usually. Right now, I know people who make A's in waxing, but haven't heard anyone who has a solid A in operative.

i was one of the said people. three factors that influence your grade in that class are 1-faculty assigned to you on competencies 2-faculty you utilize for help and to sign you off (the easiest grader isnt necessarily the best person to go to) 3-searching for better techniques and insights from fellow students, upperclassmen, etc

 

[MatthewLeeDDS]

Our instructor laid out in our syllabus that the highest grade you could get on an operative practical was a 95 because "only God is perfect"...

Dentistry is like a fraternity and dental school is like four years of hazing.

Haha, love this.

 

[jay47]

The purpose is to get an A if you want to rank high and be an oral surgeon where you'll never be prepping anything at a 0.2 mm level.

Operative had to be the most subjective class I took. I still won't forget that I missed a B in Operative because even after all the subjective grading, it came down to the fact that I had picked the supposedly wrong clamp for my rubber dam.

ROFL, so true.

If there is one thing that I have learned after 2 years of dental school, it's this: you gotta roll with the punches. .

It is IMPOSSIBLE to be the great at everything you do whether it's waxing, prepping, or dealing with faculty. Some of our courses they have made completely comprehensive, so you might get a question on a final during your second year that was from a class a year ago. It blind sides you, but who cares? You'll learn from your mistakes and get better.

As far as operative, perhaps our grading scheme is a little lighter than that, but it's still very similar. You can think you have a perfect prep, and I mean perfect, but you get an 85. And then you can think that you did poorly and get a 95. It's just like that sometimes. Truly, the goal of operative is NOT to teach you to do perfect preps, with "1.5 mm depth, 1 mm width, perfect margins and .25 mm of proximal clearance" but to teach you to be meticulous and be able to critique your own work. How often will you do an "ideal prep"? Not very often at all (except for the boards). How often will you struggle with the margins on a composite being a little open, the contact "just not there yet" and the shade of the crown ever so slightly off? Probably every day. Learn to critically examine your work and you will do well no matter what you are doing in dentistry.

 

[btk2333]

We get daily grades in Pros and the only way to get an A is to be better than the course director, the criteria for a B is at a graduate school level, most students get C's

We also have criteria on practicals that our instructors flat out tell us they don't expect anyone to be able to reach. It's all to try to make you better- my hand skills have improved exponentially this year (granted I still probably couldn't get an A on most of the practicals...) Good luck and keep at it!