Practice plans of and factors influencing graduating dental students in China

The increasing number of dental schools and increasing annual dental undergraduate enrolment have resulted in stronger competition in job hunting among dental graduates. This study aimed to investigate the practice plans of graduating dental students and the factors influencing their practice choice.

Final-year dental students of Capital Medical University who graduated between 2009 and 2011 (n = 149) were invited to complete a self-administered questionnaire. The data were analysed using SPSS version 13.0. The Mann-Whitney test was used to analyse two independent samples, and the Kruskal-Wallis test was used for more than two samples. Fisher's exact test and the chi-squared test were also used to compare qualitative data.

Among the respondents, 75.8% were female (n = 113) and 54.4% (n = 81) indicated that it was difficult to find an ideal practice position immediately following graduation. The three main contributing factors were the lack of employment opportunities (43%, n = 64), lack of work experience (40.9%, n = 61) and an inferior undergraduate degree (26.8%, n = 40). Among the respondents, 55.7% (n = 83) planned to pursue further study at university, whereas 44.3% (n = 66) planned to enter clinical practice. We also investigated the level and type of sectors in which respondents anticipated practicing, as well as the conditions that attracted respondents to practice in community health service centres.

Our findings have implications for dental educators, administrators and policy makers as they attempt to recruit qualified dental graduates to meet the nation's future dental health-care needs and advance the profession of dentistry.