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. Results: At the outset, the female students rated their knowledge of anatomical and physiological differences between skin types (p<0.001, η2=0.078) and of scales used to determine skin types (p<0.001, η2=0.085), as well as their diagnostic skills regarding skin diseases in SoC, significantly worse than the male students (p<0.001, η2=0.075), although no differences were observed in the objective MC test (p=0.905). By the end of the seminar, no gender-specific differences remained. Conclusion: The results suggest that targeted instruction and feedback can promote self-confidence and realistic self-assessment, particularly among female students.