Self-confidence through teaching: Gender differences in medical students’ self-assessment of dermatological skills and learning effects

Background

The ability to assess oneself realistically is central to medical education, as it enables students to identify their own strengths and weaknesses and can help prevent poor decision-making. Previous studies have shown that female students tend to underestimate their competencies, while male students tend to assess their abilities more realistically or overestimate them. The aim of the present study was to investigate gender-specific differences in the self-assessment of dermatological knowledge and skills among medical students and to compare these with objective test results. Methodology: As part of a seminar on skin diseases in Skin of Color (SoC) at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, a total of 142 students (57.7% female) participated in a quasi-experimental pre-post questionnaire survey during the winter semester of 2024-25. In addition to a multiple-choice (MC) test on eight dermatological visual diagnoses, self-assessments were collected on a 6-point Likert scale before and after the seminar.