Undergraduate dental students’ values related to five domains of professionalism in Thailand: altruism, personal satisfaction, conscientiousness, quality of life, professional status

Introduction : Professionalism is an essential component of dental school training in any culture. This study aimed to assess the values related to professionalism among Thai undergraduate dental students. Methods : This cross-sectional study was conducted among 232 students from all six cohorts (years 1 to 6) of an entire academic year of undergraduate dental students at a dental school in the Northern of Thailand in 2024-25. Data were collected via the self-administered Dental Values Scale (DVS) with 27 questions; answers were in a 5-item Likert scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Only gender and class year were collected as demographic information. Descriptive (e.g., percentages and means) and inferential statistics (e.g., odds ratio) were performed using IBM SPSS (version 27). Results : A total of 212 students (91.4%) completed the DVS; 165 (77.8%) were female. From the five DVS domains, altruism was valued the highest by years 1, 4 and 5, while conscientiousness by years 2 and 6 and quality of life by year 3 were valued the highest, accordingly. Although there was some gender difference in agreement levels within the various domains, it is not statistically significant. Only the question ‘working with a variety of patients’ received agreed/strongly agreed by an entire cohort of students. From years 2 to 6, ‘Do not know’ option did highlight answering pattern by cohort year. Conclusion : The way in which Thai undergraduate valued the different domains of professionalism varied across all six years. This variation might reflect the Thai Buddhist views of the world and the profession, which might differ from Western-based cultures. The teaching of professionalism should be present in every dental school.