Abstract:

Background: According to World Health Organization (WHO), unemployed health care workers is a growing problem due to insufficient absorptive capacity of public health sectors and wasteful management of available resources hence there is a need to redirect their focus to employment-promoting strategies such as entrepreneurship.

Methodology: A sample size of 331 undergraduate students at CUHAS, Mwanza, Tanzania was selected by stratified random sampling. Cross-sectional study using structured questionnaire was used to collect data. Data were fed and analysed in STATA version 13 and presented in frequencies, percentages and means.

Results: Majority of the students agreed for to have future entrepreneurial intention, perceived feasibility and propensity to act scored high (86.1%. The overall level of entrepreneurial traits was found to have mean value of 3.6. The most factors perceived by students as determining future entrepreneurial intention were preference for personal creativity (89.1%) and lack of fund to start a business (90%) for motivator and barrier respectively. Chi square test showed that self-employment of parent, any business experience and course of study were significantly associated with perceived desirability.

Conclusion: This study showed that the level of entrepreneurial traits of the students was moderate and they possessed future entrepreneurial intention. This should be value to educational authorities for encouragement of self-employment in health sector due to unemployment problem.