Introduction:

Measuring the educational environment in a university career allows the detection of elements related to achievements, satisfaction and success of the students. Due to the high level of demand and the multiple competencies that an undergraduate student has to acquire, the Dental School at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (PUC) performed in 2015 a study to measure its educational environment.

Subjects and methods:

A cross-sectional qualitative, non-experimental, transverse and correlational study was carried out to measure the educational environment. The Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure (DREEM) was applied to 331 students, from first to fifth year of the career, and correlations with the sociodemographic aspects were studied, in order to identify possible associations between these factors. In addition, three focus groups were conducted with the student that had the segments that showed the lower scores in some of the DREEM items.

Results:

In all five domains of the DREEM, results were satisfactory, but a year-on-year decrease was observed in almost all the studied variables, especially during the fifth year of the career. Focus groups with students with the worst evaluation showed that stress is an emerging variable that can be related to the educational environment.

Conclusions:

This research revealed that, in general terms, the dental career in the PUC has a rather positive educational environment, with some groups that need to be detected and supported in early stages.

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