Association between HEXACO personality traits and medical specialty preferences in Mexican medical students: a cross-sectional survey

Abstract

Background: Medical specialty is a critical choice in a physician's life because it determines their professional future and medical practice. While some are motivated to choose a specific specialty based on the monetary gain it can provide, others are inspired by seeing the work performed by a physician or by a patient's recovery. It is common to stereotype doctors' personalities by their specialty. Methods: This was a cross-sectional survey study in which we administered the 100-item HEXACO Personality Inventory-Revised to 292 medical students between September 2018 and March 2019. We evaluated six different domains of personality traits. We also included questions about their medical specialty of choice, their least preferred specialty, and the motivation behind these choices. The participants included 175 women (59.9%) and 117 men (40.1%). Results: When the participants were asked about their preferred type of medical specialty, 52.4% indicated a preference for surgical specialties (surgical group) vs 47.6% who preferred clinical specialties (clinical group). We found that the surgical group showed significantly higher scores for Extraversion and Organization domains, while the clinical group showed significantly higher scores on the Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, and Agreeableness domains. We identified critical differences within the overall group of medical students by their medical specialty preference.

When it is time to decide: factors associated to the choice of a medical specialty

“…While in Mexico they were described as more patient, gentle, kind, with a general deeper emotional response. This study also expounded that a higher score in the modesty flexibility, perfectionism, emotivism, kindness, honesty and humility traits were predictors of this preference 14 .…”

“…In this context, it is possible to propose a series of interventions such as personalized extracurricular training, as well as surgical or clinical internships, according to the students' preferences, added to the exposure to positive models among the schools of medicine teaching staffs, to favor decision-making in the future health professionals 14,20 . If countries identify the factors that influence the students' specialty choosing, they can better understand the present shortage or surplus in specific fields.…”

“…Also, in Peru, traits of dominance and openness to change predominate in those who prefer surgical specialties 15 . In Mexico, they were described as less modest, more extrovert, more diligent, more organized, and in general less emotional, finding that higher scores in the field of extroversion and organizational traits predicted this 14 . They also showed lower levels of kindness 13 and higher extroversion levels, which would be evident from the first year of their formation 3 .…”

“…Although the association with a certain type of personality has been described for each specialty, it cannot be said that these are determined a priori by a specific type, since physicians, like all people, can show complex personality traits patterns 14 .…”

Surgical career choices of medical students in China: does gender bias play a role?

“…This result was higher than the proportion of students interested in surgery reported at Jena, in Germany (25%) [ 19 ]. It was also higher than the preference for surgery among Mexican medical students (52.4%) [ 20 ]. The method of questioning and nature and phrasing of questions might explain this difference.…”