Study motives and career plans of postgraduate students in Dental School, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences

Nowadays, there is great emphasis on the commitment of dentists as health care workforce, thus, awareness of their motivations and expectations is important in order to promote general and oral health. The aim of the present study was to evaluate dental post graduate student’s motivations and career choice plans in relation to sex, marital status and parent’s education in Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran in 2009-2010. A total of 116 dental post graduate students have been participated in this survey and a valid and reliable questionnaire was designed in three sections based on previous studies consisting of motivations and career choice plans and was distributed among them. Data were entered in to SPSS (16) and were analyzed with Mann Whitney test. Social/occupational prestige was the most important motivation (%92). On the other hand, there was significant association between motivations and career choice plans with marital status and parent’s job as dentist/physician. Influence of family had significantly more impact among residents who had dentist/physician parents compared to those with parents in other occupations (p=0.011) (%65). The most important career choice plan was to work in private sector (94/84%). The married people were inclined to constitute a professional dental clinic with colleagues (p=0.0037) (%86). Single students had more interest in research in the field of dentistry (p=0.047) (%60). The most important motivations were social/ occupational prestige, income, independence and personal interest in dentistry respectively. The most important career choice plans were working in private sector, recruitment in university as dental faculty and constitution a professional dental clinic with colleagues.