Abstract

Background: Although many departments of dentistry have promising careers, public health dentists often find themselves at crossroads when looking for growth opportunities after post-graduation. This suggest the need to assess the awareness among public health dentists regarding various career prospects in India and also to assess the challenges faced by them in pursuing their opportunities.

Methodology: A cross sectional study was conducted among 600 public health dentists who completed their masters between 2015 and 2018. A 13-item questionnaire was developed and administered using Google forms which consisted of information regarding demographics and awareness of various career prospects and challenges faced by them in pursing their opportunities. Updated electronic mail details of all registered public health dentists were collected from the Indian Association of Public Health Dentistry Directory (IAPHDD). Each participant was contacted by electronic mail and reminders were sent thrice, once in every 15days.

Results: A total of 350 responses were received of which 51.4% (N = 180) were females, 48.6% (N = 170) were males. About 35.4% (N = 124) choose academics as there first preference for employment. About 40.9% (N = 143) faced inadequate opportunities in getting employed and about 59.7% (N = 209) felt that they were not getting equal opportunities when compared to other specialities in dentistry.

Conclusion: Public health dentists are facing inadequate opportunities and there is a need to create avenues for their employment.

Keywords: Public Health Dentistry, Career, Attitude.

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Citation

Citation: Tejaswi Kala., et al. “Past, Present and Future of Public Health Dentists - A Cross Sectional Questionnaire Study on Masters of the Subject”. Acta Scientific Dental Sciences 6.5 (2022): 84-88.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2022 Tejaswi Kala., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.