Assessment of student employment situation during last year of the career in the University of Buenos Aires

Knowing students profile characteristics and their changes over time, allow to apply actions, if necessary, to adapt to the new situations.  Objectives: To identify sociodemographic characteristics and employment situation of dental students during their last year of the career.  Subjects and Method: Design: Descriptive. 145 from 174 students enrolled in the Department of Comprehensive Children’s Dentistry answered anonymous and volunteer opinion surveys to collect information about age, gender, nationality, marital status, place of primary residence, working condition and relationship with dentists. Means, standard deviations and percentages were calculated.Statistical analysis was performed by Tukey’s Test. Results: Mean age 27±5 years, 80.68% female, 8.27% Latin American foreigners. 81.6% are single and 94.5% do not have children. 77.9% without family dentists, 53.06% live with their parents and 21.76% changed their place of residence to study in the institution. According to inscription lists only 19.32% were finishing their studies in the expected time. 49% referred they work 20.5±10.9 hours a week. 49.31% considered their work has no relation to the profession. 17.8% considered that always and 39.7% many times, have difficulties to attend the course. With respect to age, there were no difference between workers and no workers p=0.1593.  Conclusions: Almost half of students combine their studies with some kind of paid work. While it seems there is compatibility between performance and work situation, it is necessary to emphasize strategies that minimize the difficulties they have.