Personality Profile and Specialty Choice

from http://blog.medicaljustice.com; 6/12/15

I’ve often wondered whether medical students are interested in a certain specialty due to their personality type; or whether their personality adjusts and evolves determined by their specialty choice.

The solution is it’s probably a little both.

One academic med school website delved somewhat deeper to the question. They noted that surgeons, by way of example, are stereotyped as dominant, aggressive, uninhibited. Formal Myers-Briggs personality testing – which characterizes personalities into 1 of 16 profiles (much more about that in a very bit) noted surgeons were more extroverted, practical, social, competitive, and structured as opposed to runners in “controllable lifestyle specialties.”1 Surgeons were less creative.

Controllable lifestyle specialties were more introverted and fewer conforming than surgeons.

Primary care had essentially the most diversity in personality type.

One med school in Saudi Arabia (King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences) publishes “Guide for Specialty Selection Based on Personality Type.

There are lots of crucial factors to look out for when scouting for a medical specialty. One of essentially the most unifying variables, ranking presents itself their email list, is an excellent personality match relating to the student and also the specialty. Unfortunately, nearly all medical students don't understand the significance of matching their personality types plus the medical specialties these are serious about. In addition, the bulk of medical students’ time is invested in lectures, studying and clinical work, consequently most students do not possess time for you to commit to thinking of his or her personality type. But sooner or later during school of medicine, a student should take some the perfect time to assess his values, character, and temperament inside an honest way.

There are numerous tools to look for the personality type but we'll discuss here one of the most popular and traditionally used psychological test on earth; the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).

In Myers-Briggs testing, 4 dimension is evaluated. Each subject has 1 of 2 elements.

Dimensions Elements

1 Favorite World Extroversion (E) or Introversion (I)

2 Information Sensing (S) or iNtuition (N)

3 Decision Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)

4 Structure Judgment (J) or Perception (P)

For Favorite world, will you choose to pinpoint the outer world or perhaps your own world?

For Information, would you concentrate on what is so visible, heard, felt, smelled, or tasted? Or will you naturally read between your lines to see madness in every things?

For Decision, how can you make up your mind, and according to what? Do you would prefer to make decisions utilising an impersonal approach; making decisions which make logical sense? Or can you would rather make decisions dependant on personal values?

Finally, for Structure, which kind of lifestyle can you prefer? Getting things decided or stay open for brand spanking new options? The formal Myers-Briggs instrument includes 93 forced choice ques

tions. Forced choice means the niche needs to choose 1 of 2 possible strategies each question. Example questions include

I am preferred being (a) spontaneous; or (b) a planner Change for me personally is (a) difficult; or (b) easy. I would prefer to work (a) alone; or (b) in the team.

While it’s probably a stretch to pigeonhole personality into among 16 types, here they can be:

ISTJ ISFJ INFJ INTJ

ISTP ISFP INFP INTP

ESTP ESFP ENFP ENTP

ESTJ ESFJ ENFJ ENTJ