Profiling alumni of a Brazilian public dental school

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Abstract

Background

Follow-up studies of former students are an efficient way to organize the entire process of professional training and curriculum evaluation. The aim of this study was to identify professional profile subgroups based on job-related variables in a sample of former students of a Brazilian public dental school.

Methods

A web-based password-protected questionnaire was sent to 633 registered dentists who graduated from the Federal University of Goias between 1988 and 2007. Job-related information was retrieved from 14 closed questions, on subjects such as gender, occupational routine, training, profits, income status, and self-perception of professional career, generating an automatic database for analysis. The two-step cluster method was used for dividing dentists into groups on the basis of minimal within-group and maximal between-group variation, using job-related variables to represent attributes upon which the clustering was based.

Results

There were 322 respondents (50.9%), predominantly female (64.9%) and the mean age was 34 years (SD = 6.0). The automatic selection of an optimal number of clusters included 289 cases (89.8%) in 3 natural clusters. Clusters 1, 2 and 3 included 52.2%, 30.8% and 17.0% of the sample respectively. Interpretation of within-group rank of variable importance for cluster segmentation resulted in the following characterization of clusters: Cluster 1 - specialist dentists with higher profits and positive views of the profession; Cluster 2 - general dental practitioners in small cities; Cluster 3 - underpaid and less motivated dentists with negative views of the profession. Male dentists were predominant in cluster 1 and females in cluster 3. One-way Anova showed that age and time since graduation were significantly lower in Cluster 2 ( P < 0.001). Alternative solutions with 4 and 5 clusters revealed specific discrimination of Cluster 1 by gender and dental education professionals.

Conclusions

Cluster analysis was a valuable method for identifying natural grouping with relatively homogeneous cases, providing potentially meaningful information for professional orientation in dentistry in a variety of professional situations and environments.

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Most cited references 16

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Gender differences in dentists' working practices and job satisfaction.

W Murray Thomson, Kathryn Ayers, Brenda A Rich … (2008)

To describe the working practices and level of job satisfaction of male and female dentists. A nationwide postal survey of all dentists holding an annual practising certificate in New Zealand (response rate 78.1%). The mean number of hours worked per week was 29.1 for female and 36.0 for male dentists. The main reason for part-time practice given by women was caring for children (cited by 67.2%) and for men was personal choice (cited by 63.6%). A greater proportion of females than males were employed on a salary or as an associate in practice rather than owning their own practice. Male dentists were more active in continuing education than females. The mean career satisfaction score for male respondents was 7.6 and for females 7.1 (P<0.001). Relatively more women than men had taken a career break, usually for child rearing. Two-thirds of women and one-third of men planned to retire from dentistry before 60 years of age. Male and female dentists differ in their working patterns and career satisfaction. There is a need for ongoing monitoring of the workforce, particularly as the gender distribution (and societal trends and expectations) continues to change.

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Self-reported occupational health issues among Lithuanian dentists.

I Balciuniene, Jolanta Aleksejuniene, Alina Puriene … (2008)

This article describes the second phase of a large study of Lithuanian dentists' health, and focuses on self-reported physical health complaints, general health state and associations between the two. In 2006, a postal questionnaire survey of all (N=2,449) licensed dentists registered with the Lithuanian Dental Association was conducted, obtaining a response rate of 68.2%. Fatigue (94.7%) and back pain (91.0%) were the most prevalent physical complaints reported, and they were also the most likely to become chronic among all physical disorders. Hypertension, joint diseases and allergy were the most prevalent diagnosed and treated diseases during the previous 12 months. Only half of the surveyed Lithuanian dentists (50.4%) rated their health as satisfactory. Logistic regression revealed that fatigue (Odds Ratio: 0.52; 95%CI: 0.29-0.94), headache (OR: 0.62; 95%CI: 0.42-0.90), hand problems (OR: 0.62; 95%CI: 0.44-0.87), chest pain (OR: 0.51; 95%CI: 0.40-0.64) and musculoskeletal complaints (OR: 0.41; 95%CI: 0.28-0.60) had a significant negative impact on dentists' self-reported general health. Overall, this study suggests that Lithuanian dentists do experience a certain amount of occupationally-related health problems. It is therefore important to increase health knowledge on occupational hazards and also to emphasize the importance of early diagnosis and treatment for these disorders in Lithuania, as elsewhere.

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[Dental caries in Brazil: decline, polarization, inequality and social exclusion].

Paulo Frazão, José Leopoldo F Antunes, Paulo Capel Narvai … (2006)

To examine the caries situation in Brazilian schoolchildren between 1980 and 2003 and to determine the distribution of caries and access to treatment in this population group. We employed secondary data concerning the number of decayed, missing or filled teeth (DMFT). The studies whose data were used differed in terms of study type, study design, sampling methods, and diagnostic criteria, but yielded national estimates that are considered valid for the DMFT index. Therefore, a trend analysis based on these studies was thought to be feasible. Analysis of DMFT values revealed a high frequency of dental caries in 1980 and a moderate frequency in the 1990s. In 2003, the DMFT index was still within the moderate range. Between 1980 and 2003, a 61.7% decrease in DMFT frequency was observed. The percentage of children with no DMFT increased from 3.7% in 1986 to 31.1% in 2003. On the other hand, in the segment of the study population least affected, the percentage of children who received care increased from 26.3 in 1986 to 34.7 in 2003, yet in the group with DMFT this percentage fell from 50.2 in 1986 to 39.3 in 2003. In the segment with DMFT >/=6, the percentage of those who received care remained stable (28%). During the study period, 60% of the dental caries were found in 20% of the study population. An important decline in DMFT was observed between 1980 and 2003, perhaps as a result of increased access to fluoridated water and toothpaste and of changes in the goals of public oral health programs. Despite the improvement, caries is unevenly distributed in the pediatric population; a small proportion of individuals carries most of the disease burden. In addition, the proportion of teeth with caries that went untreated did not change between 1980 and 2003. Reducing socioeconomic disparities and adopting public health measures that target and reach the most vulnerable groups remain a challenge for policy makers in Brazil.

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Hum Resour Health

Title: Human Resources for Health

Publisher: BioMed Central

ISSN (Electronic): 1478-4491

Publication date Collection: 2010

Publication date (Electronic): 18 August 2010

Volume: 8

Page: 20

Affiliations

[1 ]School of Dentistry, Federal University of Goias, Goiania, Brazil

Article

Publisher ID: 1478-4491-8-20

DOI: 10.1186/1478-4491-8-20

PMC ID: 2933588

PubMed ID: 20718976

SO-VID: 4ce584d3-7d8a-46e0-b0a4-ebfd32b4e42a

License:

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Profiling alumni of a Brazilian public dental school

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Abstract

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Most cited references 16

Gender differences in dentists' working practices and job satisfaction.

Self-reported occupational health issues among Lithuanian dentists.

[Dental caries in Brazil: decline, polarization, inequality and social exclusion].

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