Iniciação científica, vivências acadêmicas e rendimento de graduandos em Odontologia e Medicina

The Scientific Mentorship Program (SMP) seeks to foster vocational aims and encourage the development of scientific thought in undergraduate students, and participation in the program has been found to have a positive impact on the performance coefficient (PC) of Dentistry students, but not in students from the Medicine course. The present observational study was therefore conducted to identify the personal, contextual and vocational aspects of the academic experiences of Medicine and Dentistry students, which may have influenced this finding.  A total of 123 students participated in the study, of whom 74 (60.2%) were from the Dentistry (D) course and 49 (39.9%) from the Medicine (M) course.  The short version of the Student Academic Experience Questionnaire (or QVA-r) was applied (54 questions/Likert Scale responses). The data were tabulated and submitted to statistical analysis using the Student’s t-test (α=5%). The main results revealed that the career, study and institutional dimensions differed between the groups, with higher mean scores obtained by the students of the Medicine course in the career dimension (M=4.1±0.6a; D=3.8±0.4b). Higher scores were obtained for students from the Dentistry course in the study (M=3.6±0.5 b; D=3.9±0.7a) and institutional (M=3.7±0.2 b; D=4.1±0.2a) dimensions. There was no difference between the courses in the personal and interpersonal dimensions, or in the overall QVAr score. It was concluded that different academic experiences may have influenced the contrasting impact of the SMP on the PC of the Dentistry and Medicine students.