Do Mission Statements Matter? An Evaluation of Dental School Mission Statements

Abstract

Objective: In private enterprise, the Mission Statement (MS) of a company is the compass that shows the direction the organization is heading and is a guide in major decisions. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the mission statements of all United States (US) Dental Schools for common themes and to understand how these themes align with current issues in dentistry. Methods: Two reviewers manually searched every United States (US) Dental School website to identify the mission statement of each school and four investigators reviewed the mission statements, identified and listed themes. A qualitative analytical approach was used, and recurring themes were identified. IRB Exemption was provided (HUM00175583Â) by the University of Michigan School of Medicine’s committee on human studies. Results: In this study, 68 dental schools were evaluated, and 18 different themes were identified. The mean number of themes per school was 2 and the median was 4. The minimum number of themes among dental schools was 1 and the maximum was 11 themes. The findings indicated that the most recurring theme in dental school mission statements was research and dissemination of knowledge (76.11%) and the least recurring themes, which are some of the most pressing issues in dentistry were social justice (4.47%), public health (7.46%), and health disparities (8.95%). Conclusion: Missions statements are just as important in schools as they are in business. Therefore, dental schools should consider periodically revising their mission statements to coincide with the demands of current oral health needs.