The surgeon : journal of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons of Edinburgh and Ireland, 17 3 2025, Pages S1479-666X(25)00026-5 Surgeon personality diversity across generations and subspecialties. Sier VQ, Schmitz RF, Wertenbroek RWAM, Schepers A, van der Vorst JR, SUPER Collaborators
Traditional exploration of surgical professionals' personality traits focuses on general characteristics at the domain-level of the five-factor model. Personality has been related to clinically-relevant areas such as clinical decision-making and team effectiveness, yet there is limited insight in the personality of surgeons at the facet-level of the Big Five. Here, we performed a large-scale study examining domain- and facet-variations of personality in four surgical generations and subspecialties. The Big Five Inventory-2, measuring the five domains and fifteen corresponding facets of personality, was distributed among all general surgery departments in the Netherlands. Surgically-interested medical students were approached via the surgical student society. A normative sample was matched for age to the surgical population. Corrected one-way analyses of variance were performed. The surgical population (medical students (n = 126), surgical residents not-in-training (n = 147), surgical residents-in-training (n = 227), and surgeons (n = 539)) scored higher on open-mindedness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and lower on negative emotionality relative to the normative population. Higher conscientiousness (p < 0.01) and lower negative emotionality (p < 0.001) were observed to increase per generation, together with lower open-mindedness scores in surgical residents (p < 0.001). Differences at the facet-level were present in five domains, including sub-traits such as productiveness, trust, and anxiety. Across environments, personality variances were observed in surgical subspecialty (conscientiousness, negative emotionality), teaching region (open-mindedness), and academics (open-mindedness). We delineated nuanced personality variations across generations and subspecialties in the surgical population, marking a starting point in the introduction of personality insights in the professional domain of healthcare.
