Uso de contabilidade e finanças pelos cirurgiões dentistas na gestão da atividade profissional: um estudo exploratório

Abstract

Prior studies disclosed that dentists have difficulty in dealing with finance and accounting, and it was possible to realize that there is a long distance between the professional technically capable and the professional that needs, besides technical knowledge, to add management skills to fit to the present labour market, which is highly competitive. Given that, the objective proposed in this study was to identify which financial and accounting matters are considered important by dentists. An exploratory research was performed, and its methodology combined field research, documental and bibliographical. A questionnaire was applied to the dentists, considering accounting and financial matters, and considering data collected in three institutions of higher dental education of São Paulo. The questionnaire is constituted by parts comprised of assertions regarding the three different views of the dentists for the financial and accounting contents. The first part comprises the importance given by the dentist to the referred contents, what he uses and how it should be put in practice. The second part discloses about the sample, or in other words, respondents profile. To evaluate the results, it was applied the descriptive statistics with tables of frequency. As a result, it was identified that the dentists recognize that financial and accounting matters are important for their professional performance and, although such matters are studied in some institutions, they declared, in majority, that they have not learned in graduation. Given that, this study may be a base for identifying accounting and financial deficiencies of the dentists, as well as be used to enhance their professional development, giving him the possibility of conducting his career in a better way.