First-year oral health and dentistry student perceptions of future professional work

To explore and compare how pre-doctoral dentistry (BDS) and oral health (BOH) students characterise their future professional work at the start and end of their first-year professional programme.

All BDS and BOH students were given an anonymous survey on the first and last days of their 2009 course. Start and end surveys (ES) were completed by 75% of BDS (51) and 83% of BOH students (33). This paper examines students' responses to two questions asking them to identify a situation characterising their future professional work and a professional difficulty they would likely encounter. Student responses were analysed inductively to identify key themes and confirm each theme's 'weighting' based on frequency of mention.

Students' answers to both questions revealed eight characterisations of future professional work involving the following: restorative tasks, patient-related concerns, patient emotion and behaviour, population-level/public health concerns, disease prevention and monitoring, communication, teamwork and self-management. In ES responses, BDS students emphasised restorative tasks as central to a dentist's work, and in both surveys perceived 'dealing with patients' as a central difficulty. In contrast, BOH students' answers to both questions revealed a patient care emphasis, and in both surveys, BOH students emphasised patient-related concerns as a likely difficulty.

Bachelor of Dentistry students characterised their work as primarily interventive, and BOH students, as primarily patient-centred, communicative, and preventive. Whilst BDS students apparently valued restorative capabilities, BOH students valued the ability to ensure patient well-being. Further research will examine students' differing perceptions and how these change over time.