Self-doubt masked in success: Identifying the prevalence of impostor phenomenon among undergraduate dental students at Qassim University

Objective: To investigate the prevalence of impostor phenomenon (IP) among undergraduate dental students and explore its relationship with gender and academic year.Methods: This study involved observational cross-sectional research involving undergraduate dental stu-dents (first to fifth year) at Qassim University Dental School, between February and April 2021. An electroni-cally administered, 20-item pre-validated Clance Impostor Phenomenon Scale (CIPS) was used for data collection. Data analysis was performed using SPSS version 23. Mean IP scores of both genders were compared using t-tests, one-way ANOVA and Post-Hoc tests to establish the relationship between year-wise IP scores.Results: The response rate was 80.59% (162 re-spondents). The results indicated that 8.8% of the par-ticipants had mild IP experiences, 84.1% had moderate to severe IP experiences, and 7.05% exhibited intense IP experiences. The mean IP score was highest and lowest in the third and fourth-year dental students, respectively. A statistically significant relationship was identified between year wise IP scores, while no significant difference was observed based on gender.Conclusions: Impostor phenomenon is prevalent in sub-stantial frequencies amongst dental students. This may have damaging physical and mental effects with negative consequences and could subsequently affect their intel-lectual and professional developments. The implementa-tion of a modified curriculum and self-development plans are some of the recommended solutions.(c) 2023 The Authors. Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Taibah University. This is an open access article under the CC BY -NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).