Evaluation of Dental Student's Motives and Viewpoints on Their Career Choice in Ahvaz

Changes in medical education system of country are the main policies of ministry of health. Thus, according to the inside incentives of this system along with other existing developments, this study was conducted to investigate the motivations to choose the field of study among dentistry students of Ahvaz Jundishapur university of medical sciences in March 2015. The aim of this study was to investigate the motivations for choosing the field of study among dental students of Ahvaz Jundishapur university of medical sciences (AJUMS). This cross-sectional descriptive and analytic study was performed on 264 students of professional MD (medidal doctorate) of dentistry in Ahvaz Jundishapur university of medical sciences. Sampling was conducted by the census method and a questionnaire distributed to all students of the dentistry college and nearly 118 students (45 males and 73 females) completed the questionnaires. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, frequency, the percent of frequency, and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Mann-Whitney U tests with SPSS software version 21. Results showed that having an independent office, earning high economic income and appropriate social status were the most important motivations for choosing this field of study among the students. It seems that considering to a high rate of unemployment of university graduates and available restrictions of employment in the public and private organizations, applicants tend to enter the dental field because of the reliable and independent income and high social status which can be considered as the most important influential factors for choosing this field of study.