Does Medical Students' Personality Traits Influence Their Attitudes toward Medical Errors?

Chia-Lun Lo,Hsiao-Ting Tseng,Chi-Hua Chen

doi:10.3390/healthcare6030101

Abstract

This study examined medical students’ perceptions towards medical errors and the policy of the hospital within the internship curriculum, and explored how aspects of personality traits of medical students relate to their attitude toward medical errors. Based on the theory of the Five-Factor-Model (FFM) and related literature review, this study adopted a self-devised structured questionnaire to distribute to 493 medical students in years five to seven in the top three medical schools, representing a 56.7% valid questionnaire response rate. Results showed that agreeableness is more important than other personality traits, and medical students with high agreeableness are good communicators and have a more positive attitude to avoid errors in the future. On the contrary, students with low neuroticism tended to be more relaxed and gentle. If medical educators can recruit new students with high agreeableness, these students will be more likely to effectively improve the quality of medical care and enhance patient safety. This study anticipates that this method could be easily translated to nearly every medical department entry examination, particularly with regards to a consciousness-based education of future physicians.

Highlights

Patients receive health care to improve their health
This study examined how differences in the personality traits of medical students related to differences in their attitudes towards medical errors
The questionnaires were distributed to 866 medical students with internship experience, and 493 valid questionnaires were received across the three years

Summary

Introduction

Patients receive health care to improve their health. since the increase of medical error events, medical errors have caused media coverage and public concern about patient safety. Medical errors will greatly affect the safety of patients. How to reduce the severity and frequency of medical errors has become an important issue in fields related to medical care. The teaching material known as Tomorrow’s Doctors [1] emphasizes that improving communication between physicians and patients may reduce medical errors. Worldwide healthcare institutions emphasize that clinicians can reduce the probability of medical errors by improving their communication with patients. More and more studies [4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16] highlight the importance of attitude toward medical errors in medical students’ education

Methods

Results

Conclusion