Motivations and Study Intensions at Military Dental Students of Taiwan

Objective: Military school is one of the college education systems in Taiwan. The academic courses of military dental school include military, human-social, medical ethics, medicine, dental science and intern training. This study investigate the motivation and study intensions of military dental students. The results can help us better known our students and to improve military dental education. Methods: 50 students from second to sixth years enrolled at the department of dentistry of the National Defense Medical Center are invited to complete the questionnaires. Data were collected and analyzed using the SPSS.10.0 package. The differences of enroll-motivations are analyzed with student's t test. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare scores between enroll-motivations, study motivations and learning intensions to assess the difference of our students. Students' motivation and study intension were analyzed by Pearson's coefficient of correlation. Results: Although most students joint military dental school as volunteers as their choice (63.8%), most of them followed with their parent's wills (61.6%). They wish they will have a stable job in the feature rather than they wish they will become military officers (87.2%). They will choose medicine or ordinary dental school as their first chose if the entrance exams grades were better (p=0.03 and p=0.04). They focus their study on medicine and dentistry more than military training course (p=0.036). They also pay less attention to human-social and medical ethics courses if these courses were not on the list of their feature licence exams.(p=0.043). Conclusion: Military dental school may be another choice for student to become a dentist. Students do not like military training courses arranged by school. They are facing realistically both to their study and career. Educators should design more creative activities and emphasize the importance of non-professional lessions to our students.