Are medical students agreeable? An exploration of personality in relation to clinical skills training

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Examining medical student personality is relevant to the training of students toward competence in clinical skills like trust, sincerity, altruism, empathy, and cooperation, skills that are reflected in the personality domain of Agreeableness. We examined medical student Agreeableness using the Revised NEO Personality Inventory. Medical student personality was not distinguished by Agreeableness, but by tendencies toward personal growth/ambition, leadership, intellectual creativity, problem solving, and influencing/directing others; in fact, medical students were no more or less Agreeable than police officer recruits, a group in which high Agreeableness is not preferred. Since medical student personality is more inclined towards intellectual problem solving and influencing others, rather than Agreeableness, achieving competence in clinical skills like trust, empathy, and cooperation may be enhanced by incorporating specific, evidence-based methods of interaction (e.g. agenda-setting, conflict resolution, negotiation, and alliance making) into clinical education.

Figure 1. Mean (95% CI) NEO PI-R domain scores for medical students and police recruits. The shaded area represents the ‘Average’ score range relative to NEO PI-R norms; the upper unshaded area represents the ‘High’ range and the lower unshaded area the ‘Low’ range. *p < 0.001.