Abstract:

Dentistry career in most of its part is a professionalizing discipline but also includes research. Technology, clinics and basic investigation among others are the main research topics developed up to the moment by a littler part of worldwide dentists. This means that the most part of the dentists work at a public or at a private dental office, where some are enrolled in education, and a little part work on basic or clinical research. In this milieu, it exists up to the moment a void of data related to the number of dentists which make research in Mexico. The information related to it would give a general view of dentistry research activity status related precisely to education and science development in the country at dentistry field. Due to, this study investigated the number of dentists which research in whole Mexico. The information was extracted from the official reports of CONACYT (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología / Mexican Science and Technology Council) electronic page server. The main objective of the study was to report and publish the number of investigators at 2015 with the following profile: dentists with a Ph.D. postgraduate degree which had a solid research background and enrolled in the education system or in a public health centre. The information was obtained from 25077 SNI profiles (Mexican researchers distinguished inside the National Investigators System/Sistema Nacional de Investigadores) listed in 2015. In the first place the list was exported to Microsoft excel program in order to find SNI investigators by using the following key words: odontology, stomatology, endodontics, prosthodontics, orthodontics, maxillofacial surgery, periodontics and pediatrics dentistry. Our results showed that in 2015 there was a little number of dentists working in research. This is from more than 25 thousand investigators in Mexico from all knowledge fields, only 35 dentists were found in the records from CONACYT. It was found that almost all of them were enrolled in the educational system where 28 were working inside a dentistry Faculty, 6 inside an Investigation Institute and only one inside a public health centre. Our results showed that the most part of the dentists’ population in Mexico is not related to research. Although Mexican universities have been recognized by their quality programs in some of their faculties from which highly qualified professionals graduate, if research is not encouraged from the beginning of students’ enrolment, almost nothing visible can be achieved in science development in the future. The stimulation of human resources in research may depend not only on the academic performance of students and teachers’ performance, but also on a robust claim to the Mexican government by the dental scientific and clinical community, given the low participation of the government regarding to the needs and challenges to promote the generation and increase of the science and technologies in dentistry in Mexico.

Keywords:

Dentist scientists, investigation human resources in dentistry, dentistry researchers.