Materials and methods: All final year students of the University of Ibadan dental school who had undergone their rural posting completed a 47 item semi-structured questionnaire. Survey sections included demographics, general experience, skills development and supervision. The data were collated and analyzed using SPSS version 19.
Results: The mean age of participants was 24.5 ±2.8 years, the majority 13 (54.2%) were males. All the participants' parents lived in urban communities. The majority 23 (95.8%) and 17 (70.9%) respectively mentioned that there was no adequate access to IT and library facilities. Fourteen (58.4%) participants reported that their educational experience met their expectations and they were able to develop procedural skills. The majority 22 (91.7%) and 24 (100.0%) respectively reported that the rural dentistry programme helped them to develop knowledge base and research skills. The majority agreed that their supervisors were approachable, enthusiastic, treated them with respect and were excellent role models. The majority 21 (87.5%) reported that they had opportunity to work as a team. All the participants reported that rural posting provided them the opportunity to observe the various determinants of health. The majority 17 (70.8%) reported that they will like to go for rural posting again. About 42% of the participants reported that they will like to practice as a dentist in a rural community. The majority 14 (58.3%) reported that they will not like to practice as a dentist in a rural community, 7 (50.0%) and 3 (21.4%) respectively reported that dentistry is not lucrative in rural communities and lack of infrastructure as their reasons.
Conclusion: Rural posting met the expectations of the majority of the participants. The majority also stated that there were no adequate learning facilities.