Abstract
Career education is now conducted in most dental schools. To the best of our knowledge, there have been no studies assessing the effect of career education for young dental residents on their future career plans. The aims of this study were: 1) to assess the effect of career education on formulating a future plan, and 2) to describe the career plans of dental residents for the next ten years. We sent questionnaires to 2,323 dental residents in Japan, and received 1,590 responses (response rate: 68.4%). We analyzed 1,428 individuals' data which did not contain any missing variables. The dental residents who answered that they had received career education showed a higher rate of having concrete future plans (p=0.015). After adjustment for sex, age, marital status, college attended, and parens' occupations, the correlation between having future plans and the experience of career education remained significant (prevalence ratio=1.18, 95% confidence interval =1.08, 1.29, p<0.001). The most frequent answer regarding future career plans now and in five years was "working at another's dental practice" (570 individuals: 39.9% and 723 individuals: 50.6%, respectively). In ten years, most of the respondents planned to begin their own dental clinics (705 individuals: 49.4%). This study suggests that career education is effective to promote future career planning. In addition, about half of the dental residents wanted to begin their own clinic within ten years. Further studies are needed to determine the best way to provide career education in dental colleges.
