Association of Personality Traits with Life and Work of Medical Students: An Integrative Review

Abstract

Background: Personality traits are the basic components of an individual’s personality. Although there are many published articles about the impact of personality traits on medical students, there is a lack of integrative reviews of existing articles. To close this gap, this review aims to summarize the impact of personality traits on medical students from two perspectives: life and work. Methods: The search was performed using the following databases: PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and EMBASE. All publications that assessed the impact of personality traits on life and work until February 2022 were selected. Results: Ninety-seven studies were included. The results suggest that personality traits could affect life performance, health outcomes, life satisfaction, the formation of doctor–patient relationships, mastery of knowledge, academic performance, and career planning. Different personality traits can have positive or negative impacts on these aspects. Conclusions: The results of this review suggest that personality traits can affect medical students’ lives and work. Therefore, based on the evaluation of the personality traits of medical students, it is necessary to design targeted courses and training for students to improve their personality traits, to bring about better results in their lives and work.