A Holistic Approach of Personality Traits in Medical Students: An Integrative Review

Abstract

Personality is one of the most crucial aspects of human life, since it influences all human behaviours in both personal and social life, and might also trigger important conflicts with a person’s surroundings in the setting of incompatible traits and characteristics. It is true that ‘one must be born’ for a certain medical specialty, but several components of personality might be educated with proper training. Increased levels of Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Openness associated with lower levels of Neuroticism might represent the key combination for achieving professional satisfaction in the medical profession. Medical students should receive proper interprofessional education, since effective interprofessional relationships among healthcare providers definitely improve patients’ safety. Empathy contributes to effective patient–physician communication, improving patient trust, compliance, and satisfaction, being positively correlated with Openness, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Extraversion. Emotional intelligence—the capacity to respond to one’s own and others’ emotions—was proven to contribute, in a synergistic way with empathy, to increasing empathic ability. Clinical communication skills represent a key component in medical students in order to achieve the best patient care, and they are certainly related and/or influenced by empathy, interprofessional collaboration skills, emotional intelligence and, especially, personality traits. Taking into account the complex interactions mentioned above, the implementation of effective courses based on these concepts in medical students, intending to promote the development of clinical communication skills, represents a real emergency, since it might result in a reduction in medical errors and subsequent related deaths. A thorough understanding of students’ personality is mandatory before designing these courses in order to provide a training tailored to their personality styles.

Educacion emocional como estrategia para el fortalecimiento de la personalidad en el estudiante universitario

“…Además, los rasgos de personalidad de un médico pueden influir positiva o negativamente en esa relación, así como en los resultados clínicos. Mientras que 13 consideran que varios componentes de la personalidad pueden educarse con una formación adecuada. Mayores niveles de Escrupulosidad, Amabilidad y Apertura asociados con niveles más bajos de Neuroticismo podrían representar la combinación clave para lograr la satisfacción profesional en la profesión médica.…”

Cyberbullying in teenagers – a true burden in the era of online socialization

“…[8] It is true that words should not affect the individual's spirit, but at the same time, it is also a real fact that they sometimes can be very harmful to different individuals with certain personality types emphasizing once more the role of personality assessment in students for achieving their future professional success and for avoiding any negative events that might impact the quality of their life. [9] Thus, it would be extremely useful to identify the factor that might be in fact the buffer against external distress such as bullying. Additionally, this factor should be cultivated and strengthened in those who are susceptible to becoming easy targets of certain types of harm, such as words.…”

Clinical experience can compensate for inferior academic achievements in an undergraduate objective structured clinical examination

“…Even if they are under-represented in exams, traits targeted with non-cognitive selection criteria (practical experiences, empathy, responsibility, confidence in patient-doctor communications and interactions) are undoubtedly crucial soft-skills required in the medical profession [4,5]. In recent years, several educational policy reforms in Germany have sought to strengthen the role of practical and social skills in medical curricula, which resulted inter alia in the passage of a national competency-based learning objective catalogue ('Nationaler Kompetenzbasierter Lernzielkatalog' (NKLM) [6,7]) and in drafts for an updated medical licensure act.…”