The big five: Studying the surgical personality

Abstract

Background: The challenging nature of performing surgery on a personal and professional level demands specific characteristics. Personality traits play an important role in the nature and behavior of humans, which are studied using the five-factor model. Therefore, we investigated the personality of 3 surgical generations.

Methods: Three distinct surgical populations were approached. The Dutch Big Five Inventory-2 was sent out online to 126 surgical residents (response: n = 69) and 104 surgeons (response: n = 60) in a teaching region in the Netherlands. Moreover, medical students interested in surgery were approached via the students' surgical society (response: n = 54). To obtain a normative Dutch population sample, the Longitudinal Internet studies for the Social Sciences panel was used, creating groups of the following age categories: 18 to 25 (n = 84), 26 to 35 (n = 101), 36 to 67 (n = 432). One-way analysis of variance with Bonferroni correction was used to assess differences in personality scores.

Results: Individuals interested in surgery (ie, surgically-oriented medical students, surgical residents, and surgeons) generally scored significantly higher on extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, open-mindedness, and lower on negative emotionality compared with the normative population sample. Across the surgical generations, surgical residents scored significantly lower on open-mindedness (3.60) compared with surgeons (3.92) and surgically-oriented medical students (3.82). Surgically-oriented medical students scored significantly higher in negative emotionality (2.44) compared with surgical residents (2.12) and surgeons (2.07).

Conclusion: Being a surgeon demands particular levels of determination and emotional stability. The surgical population shows a distinct personality pattern compared with the normative population, and more modest differences exist between persons in different stages of their surgical career.