Motivations and future practice plans of orthodontic residents in Saudi Arabia

This study aims to explore the criteria used by graduate students while selecting a career as orthodontists and their future aspirations.

A list of Saudi Board of Orthodontics (SB-Ortho) residents was obtained from the Central and Western regions of the Kingdom and all orthodontic residents (excluding the 1(st) year residents) were invited to participate in this survey. Permission to contact the orthodontic residents was obtained from the respective program directors. The final study sample composed of 36 orthodontic residents.

About 39% of residents chose orthodontic specialty after graduation, nearly 33% selected the career during the undergraduate education while the rest chose the specialty at other stages. Approximately, 67% of the residents chose orthodontic specialty because it is intellectual challenging. Around 25% of residents choose orthodontic to improve their earning and 39% join orthodontic for job prestige. Around 50% of orthodontic Saudi residents planned to use self-ligating brackets; 63.9% planned to use invisalign; 86.1% plan to use temporary anchorage devices. About 72% of residents plan to use a cone-beam computerized tomography; 89% plan to use a digital imaging program; 39% plan to use indirect bonding; and 28% plan to use lingual orthodontics. More than half of the residents showed interest to participate in the research and about a quarter of them were willing to work in small cities.

Most of the orthodontic residents in Saudi Arabia take up this specialty as they felt that it was intellectually challenging. The SB-Ortho program adequately prepares the residents in all the modern aspects of the specialty.