Dentists' self-evaluations: relationship to clinical performance.

Today's dental practice standards are set by the individual dentist. Quality is assured, in large part, by the accuracy of self-evaluations by dental practitioners. As a result, dental educators have attempted to improve the accuracy of self-reported evaluations by dental students by teaching such skills in the laboratory and clinic. This investigation examines multiple self-evaluations of the quality of restorative practice of 1,196 general practitioners, and investigates the relationship between these ratings and actual quality of treatment by 102 dentists for 2,753 patients.