A STUDY OF CHANGING STUDENT PERCEPTIONS OF DENTISTRY

This paper is the report of a research project that focused on the professioril socialization of dental students in the context of interaction with faculty, other students, the structured curriculum, and patients. Four sets of questions regarding the advantages of dentistry, the disadvantages of dentistry, the characteristics of the dental profession, and the characteristics of a good dentist were issued to the dental students 3 times in a year and once to their professors. By comparing student median response categories with the faculty median, the extent of professionalism of the students vas obtained. The results show that student opinion coincided with faculty belief on only one question in the set dealing with the advantages of dentistry. For the set dealing with the disadvantages, however, student and faculty response were in total agreement as was the result of the set of queotions regarding th