engleski

Dental medicine students perception on dental tourism

Introduction. Dental tourism is currently the fastest growing form of medical tourism. In Europe, it represents a market share of about 50 percent of total activities in medical tourism, while in the Republic of Croatia it is the largest source of income in private health care. Dental tourism is an activity that greatly affects the daily work, place of employment and the manner and choice of professional training of dentists in many European countries. Objective. Since more and more dentists in the Republic of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republic of Serbia decide to engage and invest in dental tourism every day, the aim of this research was to collect, statistically analyze and ultimately process and explain the data on opinions and attitudes of dental students in these three countries about this phenomenon. Materials and Methods. The research was conducted online in the form of an anonymous survey questionnaire which consisted of 20 questions. It was made with the use of Google Forms (Google inc. 2018) survey administration software. It was distributed to dental students from seven faculties from the three mentioned countries. In total, 326 students took part in the survey. The data that was obtained was statistically processed using computer programs "Microsoft Excel 2010" and “Statistica” (Tibco, v. 13. 5. 0. 17, 2018). The correlation coefficients were calculated by using the Spearman Rank test. Results. The results of the research showed that the vast majority of students have an extremely positive opinion about dental tourism and that they perceive it as a profitable economic activity that positively affects the quality of dental work in those countries where a large number of dentist take part in dental tourism, specifically because of the demand for high quality of work among the tourists. In spite of their perception of dental tourism as a profitable activity, only around ten percent of the students said that their perception directly influenced the decision to enroll in dental school. Furthermore, a quarter would be ready to move to another country because of dental tourism and a third would be ready to move to another part of their country. The majority of students would not specialise in an area of expertise that they do not find attractive, even if it would allow for larger profits from dental tourism. Almost all students believe that knowing a foreign language is crucial for dental tourism and a large majority would be ready to learn another language for dental tourism. Just a tenth of the students have plans to work in the dental tourism sector immediately after graduation, but almost a half plan to do it after obtaining a couple of years of work experience. Almost a half of the students are not aware of the potentially problematic ethical aspects of dental tourism and need better education on the subject. Despite the current poor prospects due to the decline in all economic activities and especially dental tourism due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a significant portion of the students still have plans to engage in dental tourism in the future. Conclusions. A huge majority of dental students from the Republic of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republic of Serbia perceive dental tourism as a positive phenomenon that is a huge motivating factor for dentists to increase their quality of work, and many have plans to work in dental tourism themselves in the future.

students ; dental medicine ; medical tourism ; dental tourism

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