Investigating the Relationship between Personality Dimensions in Selecting a Field Specialty for Medical Students of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences

Background: Selecting a specialty is one of the most difficult decisions for medical practitioners in their professional life, and this selection is affected by personal and intrinsic factors, such as motives and personality dimensions. Therefore, this study investigates the relationship between personality dimensions in selecting the field specialty for medical students of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 243 medical students of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences in 2016. Data were obtained from two demographic scales and a 125-item questionnaire of personality assessment according to Cloninger theory and TCI test. The association of 7 dimensions of personality traits was assessed in four groups including specialties of surgery, internal, diagnostic, and psychiatric using SPSS software as well as Kruskal-Wallis and Mann- Whitney tests. The significance level was considered at 0.05 in this study. Results: There was a significant difference between men and women regarding reward dependency, harm avoidance, and self-directiveness (p 0.05). Women had a higher mean in terms of reward dependency and harm avoidance, while they had lower mean regarding selfdirectiveness. There were significant differences among personality dimensions, harm avoidance, persistence, and self-directiveness in specialties (p 0.05); however, harm avoidance had the highest mean in psychiatric specialty; persistence showed the highest mean in surgery specialty, and self-directiveness assigned the highest mean to itself in diagnostic specialty. Conclusion: Considering the fact that personality patterns can be different in specialties, retraining on the association of personality traits and the selection of specialty can help students, managers, and educational planners in the future.