title: Career anchors of dentist leaders.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The work of a health care leader is demanding; in order to cope, leaders need motivation and support. The occurrence of intrinsic factors called career anchors (combination of one's competence, motives and values) could be a contributing factor in dentist leaders' career decisions. The aim of our study was to identify dentist leaders' career anchors and their association to dentist leaders' retention or turnover of the leadership position.
  
  
  METHODS
  Materials were gathered in 2014 via an electronic questionnaire from 156 current (Leaders) or former (Leavers) Finnish dentist leaders. Career anchor evaluation was conducted by the questionnaire and scoring-table taken from Edgar Schein's Career Anchors Self-Assessment. Both the most and the least important career anchors were detected by the highest and lowest scores and their occurrence reported as percentages. Associations between career anchor scores and tendency to stay were analyzed with logistic regression.
  
  
  RESULTS
  'Technical/Functional Competence' and 'Lifestyle' were most frequently reported as the most important and 'Entrepreneurial Creativity' and 'General Managerial Competence' as the least important career anchors. However, a higher level of 'General Managerial Competence' anchor was most significantly associated with staying in a leadership position. Instead, 'Pure Challenge' and 'Lifestyle' decreased the odds to stay.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The knowledge of the important and essential career anchors of dentist leaders' and individuals' could perform crucial part in career choices and also in planning education, work opportunities and human resource policies promoting retention of dentist leaders and probably also other health care leaders.
authors.affiliation: a Institute of Dentistry , University of Eastern Finland , Kuopio , Finland ;
authors.forename: Tiina
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Tuononen
authors.affiliation: b Department of Health and Social Management , University of Eastern Finland , Kuopio , Finland ;
authors.forename: Johanna
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lammintakanen
authors.affiliation: a Institute of Dentistry , University of Eastern Finland , Kuopio , Finland ;|c Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery , Kuopio University Hospital , Kuopio , Finland.
authors.forename: Anna Liisa
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Suominen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D003815:Dentists / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D005387:Finland; D006801:Humans; D007588:Job Satisfaction; D007857:Leadership; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D012647:Self-Assessment; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
keywords: Career choice; dentists; leadership; personnel turnover; retention