Career choice and future plan of Chinese 8-year stomatology medical doctor program students

This elite education reform that commenced in 2001 aims to improve the quality of Chinese dentists. It is expected to be one of the biggest drivers that lead dental education of China to a new stage. The authors identified and analyzed the perspectives of Chinese 8-year stomatology medical doctor (SMD) program students toward their career choice and future plan.

The data from a self-administered questionnaire (4 items regarding career choice and 6 items about future plan), administered to 87 8-year SMD program students from the School of Stomatology, Peking University, Beijing, China, were used. The authors performed a comparison of the students of different sexes and home locations using the Chi-square test.

Of the students, 34.5% indicated interpersonal motives as the reason to choose the 8-year SMD program, and only 52.9% thought that they had made good choices. The top three popular careers were those of prosthodontists (20.7%), oral surgeons (14.9%), and orthodontists (13.8%). The majority of students preferred first-tier cities (85.7%) and university hospitals (71.3%).

In China, most 8-year S.M.D students would like to work as clinical dentists of university hospitals in first-tier cities. The top three career choices of graduates would be prosthodontists, oral surgeons, and orthodontists.