MOTIVATIONS FOR STUDYING DENTISTRY AND DENTAL COLLEGE PREFERENCE AMONG RAS AL KHAIMAH MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES UNIVERSITY( RAKCODS) STUDENTS
and motivations towards prospective professions. Dentistry is a well-respected and reputable profession in societies all over the world. Several factors may govern or modulate the decision of pursuing this field. Traditionally, several factors have been recognized that may influence one’ s decision to choose dentistry as a future career including oral health promotion, assisting and working in societies, availability and ease of employment, financial security, prestige, provision of enough time off for family life, desire to work in health care and making a good income 2-6. Interestingly, variation in social background, race, gender and country have been found to influence career selection as well 7-10. In the United States of America for example, it has been reported that African-American students were more inclined to serve the community, while the Caucasian-American students’ motivation to graduate as a dentist was related to fulfilling family commitments 11. In a study by Khami and his colleagues 12, social status and security were ranked amongst the highest by the students. Many students consider the dental profession as prestigious. In a study involving more than 400 students prestige topped the other factors scoring 44.4 % and helping other people came second: 43.6 % 13. A substantial percentage of people in many communities cannot afford dental treatment. Government clinics are usually congested and limited to emergency and basic dental services. Thus, many authors explored altruism and empathy towards the population’ s oral health status as motives among the students, however, many reports failed to show a great impact of these factors on the choice of a dental career, particularly among male students. Several publications have demonstrated that gender differences are some of the driving forces of the career. Females appeared to be more motivated to promote oral health and care than males 9, 14. In a piece of research involving four dental colleges in South Africa, Lallo and his group 15, found racial differences as one of the motivations amongst the surveyed students, mainly in terms of finance, post-graduation practice, community services and financial debts. Freire and colleagues 6, in a cross-sectional study used a self-administered questionnaire to investigate ambitions and motives to choose a dental career of all first-year students enrolled in the 1993 – 95 and 2006 – 08 periods in one of the Brazilian dental. The report found significant differences in the freshmen’ s motivations and various professional perspectives overtime. The study revealed diverse personal views over the influencing factors in pursuing a dental career among students.
2. Aim of the study The objectives of this study were to investigate the driving motives and influential factors of RAKCODS students towards choosing dentistry as their future career, and whether there were any specific reasons for preferring RAKCODS over other dental colleges in UAE.
3. Methods The research proposal was approved by the research and ethics committee of RAKMHSU, reference number( RAKMHSU-REC-1-2015-F-D). A selfadministered questionnaire with three sections( A, B and C) was constructed using previously reports published in the literature. The first section( A) covered demographic information including age, gender, nationality and high school curriculum. The second part( B) included 19 items inquiring about the potential influential factors in choosing a dental career. The third section( C) consisted of six questions probing the reasons for preferring RAKCODS as a college to pursue a dental career. Responses on students’ motivation were collected using threepoint ordinal scales“ important, less important, not important”. A total of 164 registered students were included in the survey. They were students who had just finished their first academic year 2013-2014 and newly admitted students for the academic year 2014-2015. The questionnaire was pretested on 40 students. A correction of ambiguity was performed on all items and prepared for the online survey. The students were approached via their university email ID and a message was sent to the respective students explaining the online questionnaire, its voluntary nature, the need for honesty in answering the questions and the need for acceptance to participate in the research. A clear statement was written in the message denoting that a response to the questionnaire would be considered as their consent. The online-link to the questionnaire was emailed to the respective academic year students and activated for three weeks. Three reminder emails were sent to the students with a one week interval requesting completion of the questionnaire. The survey allows only one answer to be selected for each variable and the system only accepts the fully answered questionnaires. By the end of the third week the questionnaire link was deactivated and the data were saved as an Excel file.
142 STOMA. EDUJ( 2016) 3( 2)