Satisfaction with dental summer program and reasons to study dentistry

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the satisfaction with the summer programme for the participants to understand the dental curriculum, and to study influencing factors for their choosing dentistry to study and pursing to be a dentist as their career. METHODS: A one-week summer dental programme is provided by the University of Hong Kong annually to introduce dental curriculum to the prospective dental applicants. Anonymous questionnaire surveys were conducted at the end of the summer programme to 120 participants in July 2011. Demographic information of gender, age and their education background (local or international schools) were collected. Their ratings of satisfaction with individual courses such as problem based learning (PBL) tutorials and hands-on workshops (HOWs) in Likert scale were calculated to give an overall score from 1 to 5. The participants were also asked the importance of influencing factors of choosing dentistry as their career in Likert scale. RESULTS: Totally 114 participants (65 females) returned their questionnaires. Many of them (75%) were aged 15 to 17. Sixty percents of the participants were from local secondary school, and the remaining were mainly from international schools with a few graduates. The mean of their overall satisfaction with the programme was 4.4. HOWs was the most welcome course. The mean satisfaction score on PBL tutorials was higher than lectures (p=0.01). The opportunity to help others, dentist is a professional, and desire to choose medical/health career were the 3 main influencing factors for the participants to choose dentistry. Gender, age and education background have no significant effects affecting the influencing factors for the participants to choose dentistry. CONCLUSIONS: The participants were satisfied with the dental summer programme. Hands-on workshop and PBL tutorial were popular courses. Helping people as a dentist is a major reason for them to choose dentistry as their career.