BackgroundThe study investigated the extent to which approaches to work, workplace climate, stress, burnout and satisfaction with medicine as a career in doctors aged about thirty are predicted by measures of learning style and personality measured five to twelve years earlier when the doctors were applicants to medical school or were medical students.MethodsProspective study of a large cohort of doctors. The participants were first studied when they applied to any of five UK medical schools in 1990. Postal questionnaires were sent to all doctors with a traceable address on the current or a previous Medical Register. The current questionnaire included measures of Approaches to Work, Workplace Climate, stress (General Health Questionnaire), burnout (Maslach Burnout Inventory), and satisfaction with medicine as a career and personality (Big Five). Previous questionnaires had included measures of learning style (Study Process Questionnaire) and personality.ResultsDoctors' approaches to work were predicted by study habits and learning styles, both at application to medical school and in the final year. How doctors perceive their workplace climate and workload is predicted both by approaches to work and by measures of stress, burnout and satisfaction with medicine. These characteristics are partially predicted by trait measures of personality taken five years earlier. Stress, burnout and satisfaction also correlate with trait measures of personality taken five years earlier.ConclusionsDifferences in approach to work and perceived workplace climate seem mainly to reflect stable, long-term individual differences in doctors themselves, reflected in measures of personality and learning style.

for their extensive discussion of the ideas contained in this paper. I also wish to thank the National Children's Bureau, and in particular Mr K. Fogelman who gave me permission to re-analyse the data obtained by the National Child Development Study, and the Survey Archive of the Social Science Research Council, and in particular Mr E. Roughley who provided those data. Drs Mascie-Taylor, Chaurasia and Goswami kindly gave me permission to quote from their unpublished data, for which I am very grateful. Finally, I am very grateful to Mrs J. Yap for her help in the preparation of the manuscript.

Objective To determine whether the ethnicity of UK trained doctors and medical students is related to their academic performance. Design Systematic review and meta-analysis. Data sources Online databases PubMed, Scopus, and ERIC; Google and Google Scholar; personal knowledge; backwards and forwards citations; specific searches of medical education journals and medical education conference abstracts. Study selection The included quantitative reports measured the performance of medical students or UK trained doctors from different ethnic groups in undergraduate or postgraduate assessments. Exclusions were non-UK assessments, only non-UK trained candidates, only self reported assessment data, only dropouts or another non-academic variable, obvious sampling bias, or insufficient details of ethnicity or outcomes.Results 23 reports comparing the academic performance of medical students and doctors from different ethnic groups were included. Meta-analyses of effects from 22 reports (n=23 742) indicated candidates of "non-white" ethnicity underperformed compared with white candidates (Cohen's d=−0.42, 95% confidence interval −0.50 to −0.34; P<0.001). Effects in the same direction and of similar magnitude were found in meta-analyses of undergraduate assessments only, postgraduate assessments only, machine marked written assessments only, practical clinical assessments only, assessments with pass/fail outcomes only, assessments with continuous outcomes only, and in a meta-analysis of white v Asian candidates only. Heterogeneity was present in all meta-analyses. Conclusion Ethnic differences in academic performance are widespread across different medical schools, different types of exam, and in undergraduates and postgraduates. They have persisted for many years and cannot be dismissed as atypical or local problems. We need to recognise this as an issue that probably affects all of UK medical and higher education. More detailed information to track the problem as well as further research into its causes is required. Such actions are necessary to ensure a fair and just method of training and of assessing current and future doctors.

Coren and Porac (1976) reported that objects looked larger in the right eye of right-eye dominant subjects and in the left eye of left-eye dominant subjects. This paper attempts to repeat that finding. Two circles of same or different size were presented haploscopically in a binocular three-field tachistoscope, to right or left visual half-field and to the upper or lower visual field, one to the right eye and one to the left. A total of 43 subjects reported which of the two circles was the larger, each subject carrying out 120 trials of the experiment. Overall subjects reported that the stimulus to the left eye was significantly larger than that presented to the right eye. There was no association with eye dominance, and therefore the Coren and Porac finding could not be repeated. There was however a very significant association with handedness, left-handed subjects tending to report that the stimulus in the right eye looked larger, and right-handed subjects reporting that the stimulus in the left eye looked larger.