Perception of Causes of Repetition Amongst Dentistry Students A Novel Experience with Content Analysis

Abstract

To determine the perception of fourth-year dentistry students at a private Chilean university, regarding the causes of their course repetition. Open-ended questions were asked to 14 repeating students. The resulting narratives went through content analysis using QDA Miner Lite software. The category "non-fullfilment with clinical requirements" had the highest frequency of appearance (52.0 %). Codes with the highest frequency of appearance were "Lacked of time" (24.0 %); "Lack of proper organization of time/patient's agenda" (18.0 %) and "Lack of knowledge of the clinical dynamics" (16.0 %). The tardiness and repeated absences of the patients were mentioned as the greatest difficulty faced by the students (18.0 %). Students perceive the reasons behind their repetition, differently. However aspects associated with compliance of clinical requirements and patients management are recurring issues. Content analysis is a useful tool for acquiring and analyzing data of complex phenomena as perspectives on university repetition among higher-level dentistry students.