EVALUATION OF THE UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT’S INTEREST FOR DENTAL SPECIALITIES

Background and Aim:
Because of the recent growing trend of dental student’s to being specialized, it would be remarkable to analyze the undergraduate student’s interest for the different specialties in dentistry. These might be helpful to anticipate and prevent possible job market saturation. For these reason the aim of this study, is to know about the undergraduate dental students interest for dental specialties and other professional related topics.

Material and Methods:
A survey was done to the dental students of the first (n=90), third (n=96) and last (n=90) year of the Dental Degree of the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC) (Sant Cugat de Vallés, Barcelona, SPAIN).

Results and Discussion:
The mean survey’s participation among the students was >80% (1st year 98.9%, 3rd year 81.25%, 5th year 85.6%).
Regarding the interest of students to be owner of a dental clinic, an increasing tendency was observed from first year (84.27 %) to the last one (48.05%).
About their motivation for being a specialist or a general dentist, the main part of the students, regardless of the academic year, prefer to specialize. Of the different dental fields, a 25% of the total students surveyed would choose orthodontics as their main specialty, followed by dental implantology (20%).
Finally, a 45.75% of total students would like to combine their clinical work in the private practice with academic activities in the university.

Conclusions:
The large majority of UIC’s undergraduate dental students would like to become a specialist in one of the different dental fields.
Approximately half of the students surveyed would like to combine their clinical work in the private practice with academic activities in the university.