Personality characteristics as a prognostic factor for specialty choice in nursing and medical students

Career choice is one of the most important desicion in a person?s life. Career is not only earning money, it is also expression and realize of her-his self. In this respect the main goal must be choicing a career that fit her-his personality characteristics and make happy for one?s lifetime. The aim of this study is to examine the association between personality characteristics and specialty choice in nursing and medical students. The 5F personality enventory (5FPE) was administered to Cukurova University School of Nurse and Medicine students. The 5FPE a measure of 5 personality characteristics (neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) with each domain having underlying facets. A varied list of predictors of specialty choice have been studied, including demographic and socioeconomic factors and lifestyle plans. Of the total 202 students, 95 were form nursing school and 107 were form medical school. There were differences among specialties for neuroticism, openness agreeableness, extraversion and conscientiousness. Various pairwise differences between specialty categories were found. Specialty categories were compared using the 5FPE. Numerous specialty variations were identified for neuroticism, openness, and agreeableness. The findings may be useful to medical school officials and faculty who recruit and counsel students and to students themselves as they reflect on their personality characteristics on their path to making career choices. Predictors of specialty choice, especially primary care careers, are helpful to medical school officials and faculty involved in medical school recruitment and counseling and to students planning their career paths.