First Year Dental Students’ Self-Perceptions And Attitudes Towards Dentistry

To determine first year dental students’ self-perceptions and attitudes about dentistry as a profession as well as if any gender differences existed among participants. The survey was performed at the beginning of 2023/2024 academic year at the Faculty of Dental Medicine, Medical University – Sofia, Bulgaria. All first-year dental students (n=120) that enrolled to study dentistry were administered 12-item anonymous questionnaires. The data was processed with IBM SPSS Statistics 28.0 by using descriptive statistics, One-Sample Chi-Square Test, One-Sample Binominal Test and Independent-Samples Mann-Whitney U Test. The significance level at which the null hypothesis was rejected was p<.05. 115 students responded to the survey (response rate 96%), with 46 (40.0%), p=.040 representing males. The majority considered dentistry a humane - 70 (60.9%), noble - 69 (60%), and prestigious - 67 (58.2%) occupation, bringing independence to the dentist - 66 (57.4%), p< .001. According to these variables, females’ proportions were greater than males’ (p= .135). 52 (45.2%) participants suggested “good income” as males - 27 (23.5%) were more than females - 25 (21.7%) in this regard (p= .135). Other indicated features were “difficult education”- 48 (41.7%), “provides social contacts”- 42 (36.5%), and “hard to practice” - 21 (18.2%), p< .001. First-year students demonstrated good background knowledge of dentistry as a profession – humane, noble, prestigious, bringing independence and good income, with difficult education, providing social contacts, and hard to practice after graduation. No gender differences were found.