Investigating the Relationship between Personality Dimensions in Selecting a Field Specialty for Medical Students of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences

Abstract

Introduction: selecting a specialty is one of the most difficult decision of medical practitioners, and this selection depends on personal factors, such as motives and dimensions of personality traits. Therefore, this study investigates relation between of dimensions of Personality traits on selecting the specialty for Medical Students of Mashhad University of Medical SciencesMethods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 243 medical students of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences in 2016. Data were obtained from two demographics questionnaires and 125-item questionnaire of personality assessment according to Cloninger theory and TCI test. The association among 7 dimensions of personality traits in four groups including surgery-general, internal medicine, diagnostic and psychiatric specialties was assessed by applying SPSS software and Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests. In this study, a= 0.05 was considered as significance level. Results: There was a significant difference between men and women in reward dependency, harm avoidance and self-directedness (p <0.05).women had a higher mean in terms of reward dependence and harm avoidance, however, lower mean regarding the self-directedness dimension. There were significant differences regarding personality dimensions, harm avoidance, persistence and self-directedness among specialties (p <0.05), so that harm avoidance, persistence and self-directedness had the highest mean in psychiatric specialty, surgery-general specialty and diagnostic specialty, respectively. Conclusion: Considering that personality patterns in specialties can be different, thus, awareness of the association between personality traits and the selection of specialty can help students, managers and planners in the future.