Assessment of Personality Traits and Their Changes Over the Undergraduate Medical Course: A Pseudo-longitudinal Analysis among Indian Medical Students

Abstract

Background: Personality of medical students have been shown to affect both their academic performance as well as their capabilities to develop rapport with patients, with evidence that they change through the medical course. This research aimed to explore the personality traits of undergraduate medical students and assess whether personality parameters changed throughout the medical education course. Methods: A pseudo-longitudinal design was utilized for this study. A total of 346 MBBS students studying in a Medical College of Eastern India were recruited at different stages of their coursework. These participants were similar in their sociodemographic makeup and differed only with respect to their year of MBBS study. The personality characteristics were assessed among these participants using the short-form revised Eysenck personality inventory. Results: The minimum possible score for each subscale was 0, and the maximum was 12. Mean scores of the participants for the extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism, and lie scales were 6.17±3.09, 7.51±3.16, 3.40±1.61, and 4.98±2.48, respectively. Females scored significantly higher in neuroticism and lie dimensions. There were significant differences of psychoticism scores between rural and urban background participants. Significant negative trend was seen from the first to the final year of study in the extraversion dimension (Kendall’s tau =-0.094, p-value=0.025). Conclusion: Medical students in India scored high on the neuroticism and low on the psychoticism scales of personality with a trend of increasing extraversion over the years of their coursework.

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“…Interestingly, the authors reported that the students became more introverted as time went on. 22 Other international studies that examined low-and middle-income areas include the work by Johnson et al, which examined traumatic brain injuries in Honduras to better understand their etiology and severity, and finally the work by Amo-Tachie et al, which examined the health practices of blood donors in Ghana. 23,24 As we head into 2023, it is important to note that the global pandemic of COVID-19 is still ever present.…”