There are important differences between the personalities of doctors, their patients, and the general population, researchers in Australia have found.
In a paper published in BMJ Open1 researchers found that doctors were significantly more agreeable, conscientious, extroverted, and neurotic than the general population, but that patients were more open than doctors.
The researchers compared the outcomes of two surveys to find out if there were personality trait differences between doctors and other people. The first survey was the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey of 25 358 members of the general public aged 20-85 which included 18 705 patients, 1261 highly educated people, and 5814 professional carers. The second was the Medicine in Australia: Balancing Employment and Life survey of …