Career Decisions of Undergraduate Dental Students at the University of Science and Technology, Yemen

Abstract

Students’ reasons for choosing dentistry as a profession have not been well documented, especially in the developing countries. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the reasons why undergraduate Yemeni dental students who attended the University of Science and Technology (UST) chose dentistry as a career. A total of 300 out of 500 responses were recorded for this study, a response rate of 60 percent. An anonymous questionnaire was administered to dental students at UST, and a chi‐square test was used for statistical analysis of the data. The results showed that students chose dentistry as a career for the following reasons: economic (easy to find jobs, 44.7 percent); vocational (I like to treat people to improve their health, 39.0 percent); personal (my family dentist's encouragement, 37.3 percent); and professional (I can work in many fields, 33.0 percent). When group and item scores were compared between genders, statistically significant differences were only found for vocational reasons (p<0.05). In conclusion, the reasons Yemeni dental students chose dentistry as a profession were primarily economic, then vocational. However, vocational reasons were found to be the significant factors for choosing dentistry as a career by both genders in this group of UST Yemeni dental students.