Main

Sir, we would like to respond to the Taylor et al. paper on situational judgement tests (SJT).1 There is a great deal in the paper which we agree with and we particularly welcome the proposal to create an SJT practice paper. We believe, however, that there are areas that warrant further consideration.

In our original paper we questioned what SJTs are actually assessing.2 Taylor et al. have clarified that they are assessing 'non-academic attributes' and also tell us these inter- and intra-personal attributes, such as integrity, teamworking and resilience, are professional ones.1 This is plausible, but, as we cover in our paper, such attributes are only professional when they are directed by the right ethical concerns. It would be possible to show excellent teamworking (say, directed at defrauding a patient) where it is anything but professional.

It could be argued that the expert panel that reviews SJTs ensures that it is the options driven by the correct ethical concerns which are selected. Taylor et al. tell us the panel includes training programme directors, educational supervisors and postgraduate dental deans. These professionals will bring a great wealth of practical experience but it is not mentioned if they have specifically ethical expertise. We agree with the authors that ethical and moral judgement are appropriate attributes to work in healthcare, in fact we would say they are essential, but they are only indirectly assessed by SJTs.

We would also agree that a single interview station is unlikely to accurately capture all the professional attributes that SJTs aim to assess. However, we reiterate our belief that Dental Foundation Training (DFT) selection should explicitly assess ethical reasoning and that a third face-to-face station is a plausible way to do so. SJTs do check whether applicants are aware of what sorts of behaviour are expected of a newly qualified dentist. However, we are still concerned that giving 50% of DFT assessment to SJTs gives applicants the impression that they simply need to undertake a set of behaviours without understanding why those behaviours matter.