Cut from the same cloth? investigating the personality of interventional and surgical cardiovascular specialists

Abstract

Purpose: Considering that the treatment of patients with complex vascular disease requires multidisciplinary collaboration in teams and personality traits can impact team dynamics, we investigated the personality structures of vascular surgeons, cardiothoracic surgeons, and interventional radiologists using the validated big five model.

Methods: A cross-sectional study utilizing the validated Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2) questionnaire. Corrected one-way analyses of variance were performed to compare personality domain scores between the specialist groups. Questionnaires were distributed among all Dutch general surgery departments and through the Dutch Societies for Interventional Radiology (NVIR) and Cardiothoracic Surgery (NVT). A total of 224 specialists participated: 78 interventional radiologists (mean age 48.2y, 20.5% female), 41 cardiothoracic surgeons (mean age 49.2y, 26.8% female), and 105 vascular surgeons (mean age 49.9y, 17.1% female).

Results: For the personality domains agreeableness and negative emotionality, differences were observed between the three specialist groups, while the scores for open-mindedness, conscientiousness, and extraversion were similar. In particular, cardiothoracic surgeons scored higher on agreeableness (4.13 vs. 4.00; p = .046) relative to interventional radiologists. Vascular surgeons had lower scores on negative emotionality relative to interventional radiologists (2.00 vs. 2.20, p = .007). Differences at the facet-level were present in four of the five personality domains between interventional and surgical specialists, including sub-traits such as compassion, creative imagination, and assertiveness.

Conclusion: While vascular surgeons, cardiothoracic surgeons, and interventional radiologists are involved in shared cardiovascular care pathways, they display nuanced differences across domains and more granular facets of personality. These findings lay the foundation for studies on self-awareness and interprofessional collaboration in shared clinical pathways through joint understanding of personality in multidisciplinary teams.

Keywords: Aortic surgery; Aortic team; Big five personality; Multidisciplinary team; Surgeon personality; Team dynamics.

Fig. 1

Big five personality domain comparisons between interventional and surgical specialist groups, contrasted against the normative population Personality score distributions of vascular surgeons (VS; red) cardiothoracic surgeons (CTS; green) and interventional radiologists (IR; blue) contrasted against the normative population (horizontal dashed line). (a) Open-mindedness, (b) Conscientiousness, (c) Extraversion, (d) Agreeableness, and (e) Negative Emotionality (scale: 1–5). Horizontal red lines represent the mean. Statistics: One-way analysis of covariance (covariate = gender, independent variable = specialty). Significance was adjusted for multiple comparisons (Bonferroni; ∗p <.05)

Fig. 2

Trait facet averages of personality scores of interventional and surgical specialist groups. Within each of the five domains of personality, three subdomains (facets) may be distinguished. Here, average facet scores are visualized for vascular surgeons (red), cardiothoracic surgeons (green), and interventional radiologists (blue) per domain; (a) Open-mindedness, (b) Conscientiousness, (c) Extraversion, (d) Agreeableness, and (e) Negative Emotionality. Statistics: One-way analysis of covariance (covariate = gender). The mean difference is based on estimated marginal means and significance was adjusted for multiple comparisons (Bonferroni; significantly different (p <.05) versus interventional radiologists (IR; *), cardiothoracic surgeons (CTS; ~), and vascular surgeons (VS; #))