Objectives: This study aims to investigate the economic hardships of dentists from the rapid reduction of incomes after the IMF crisis in Korea 1998, the retirement plan status of those dentists, and to provide the basic data to determine an economic retirement plan of dentists.
Methods: Among the 14,359 dentists in Korea, 855 dentists were surveyed. The surveys were from February 22, 2010 to April 22, 2010, and were carried out with 484 copies that were selected to be used for analysis. The collected data were analyzed with SPSS statistics program 15.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA).
Results: The dentist group with a net monthly income of '2-2.5 million [corrected] won' showed the highest retirement planning (P < 0.001). The preparation period for an economic retirement was about 10 years (P < 0.001). Single and married dentists both showed 'private insurance' as the highest economic retirement plan (P < 0.05).
Conclusions: A more systematic retirement plan for Korean dentists is required and the government needs to implement a training program for professional retirement planning.
© 2011 FDI World Dental Federation.