Kontakt 2022, 24(4/2022):346-353 | DOI: 10.32725/kont.2022.042

What shapes students' interest in working in different health care settings? A case study of dietetics students in SloveniaSocial Sciences in Health - Original article

Katarina Babnik¹, Darja Barlič Maganja², Tadeja Jakus², Mojca Stubelj², Tamara Poklar Vatovec^{2, *}

¹ University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Department of Psychology, Ljubljana, Slovenia

² University of Primorska, Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Nutrition Counselling - Dietetics, Izola, Slovenia

Introduction: A holistic and prevention-oriented health care system relies, among other things, on educational institutions that prepare future professionals for the various specialties. Previous research shows that working in primary health prevention is less attractive to students of health sciences.

Objectives: The study examined the career interests of dietetics students, and the role of acquired skills, satisfaction with their studies, and length of study on these interests.

Methods: Three scales measuring self-assessed competencies, satisfaction with studies, and career interests were validated and used in the study on a sample (N = 123) of dietetics students in Slovenia. Reliability and dimensional structure analyses of the scales, descriptive statistics, and linear regression analyses were performed.

Results: Students were primarily interested in becoming public health dietitians and showed little interest in the work of an administrative dietitian. Self-assessed competencies, satisfaction with the programme, and length of study explained a moderate amount of the variance in career aspirations for work as a clinical dietitian and for research in dietetics. However, the factors studied did not explain career preferences for administration or public health dietitian.

Conclusions: The study shows that preferences and interests for different occupational subfields in dietetics are determined by different factors and that a general predictive model is not a valid approach for studying preferences and interests for work.

Keywords: Career development; Career preferences; Dietetics students; Health care system; Labour market; Satisfaction with studies; Self-assessed competencies

Grants and funding:

This work was supported (co-financed) by the Republic of Slovenia and the European Union under the European Social Fund within the project “Innovative learning and teaching in higher education” under Grant (numer 5442-163/2017/78).

Conflicts of interest:

The authors confirm that they have no conflict of interests associated with this publication.

Received: July 26, 2022; Revised: December 9, 2022; Accepted: December 14, 2022; Prepublished online: December 16, 2022; Published: December 19, 2022  Show citation