Personality traits and career choices among physicians in Finland: employment sector, clinical patient contact, specialty and change of specialty

Table 1 Basic characteristics of 2837 Finnish physicians, by gender and specialty

	Women (N = 1838)		Men (N = 999)			Total (N = 2837)
Characteristics	Number	Percent	Number	Percent	p-value ^a	Number	Percent
Gender
Women	1.838	65				1.838	65
Men			999	35		999	35
Age (M ± SD)	47.94 ± 10.63		52.02 ± 11.72		< 0.001	49.4 ± 11.19
Employment sector					< 0.001
Public	1393	67.59	668	32.41		2.061	73
Private	445	57.35	331	42.65		776	27
Medical specialty					< 0.001
Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine	120	64.17	67	35.83		187	6.6
Surgery	80	34.93	149	65.07		229	8.1
Pediatrics	124	75.61	40	24.39		164	5.8
Obstetrics and Gynecology	155	83.33	31	16.67		186	6.6
Psychiatry	231	75.49	75	24.51		306	10.8
Radiology	55	52.88	49	47.12		104	3.6
Internal Medicine and Oncology	91	63.64	52	36.36		143	5.0
Ophthalmology and Otorhinolaryngology	68	51.91	63	48.09		131	4.6
Other specialties of Internal Medicine	270	62.21	164	37.79		434	15.3
Occupational Health	178	65.68	93	34.32		271	9.5
General Practice	403	71.84	158	28.16		561	19.8
Hospital Service Specialties	63	52.07	58	47.93		121	4.3
Clinical Patient Contact (hours per week; M ± SD)	18.74 ± 9.70		18.36 ± 11.14		0.36	18.61 ± 10.23
No clinical patient contact	111	54.15	94	45.85		205	7.2
1–12 h per week	359	61.16	228	38.84		587	20.7
13–26 h per week	957	69.50	420	30.50		1.377	48.5
27 h per week or more	411	61.53	257	38.47		668	23.6
Personality trait (M ± SD; range 1–5)
Extraversion	3.37 ± 0.90		3.16 ± 0.87		< 0.001	3.30 ± .89
Conscientiousness	3.83 ± 0.75		3.62 ± 0.72		< 0.001	3.76 ± .75
Openness to Experience	3.18 ± 0.74		3.30 ± 0.74		< 0.001	3.22 ± .75
Agreeableness	3.40 ± 0.68		3.39 ± 0.67		0.83	3.39 ± .68
Neuroticism	2.94 ± 0.84		2.62 ± 0.76		< 0.001	2.83 ± .82

^aCategorical variables were compared by chi square tests and continuous variables were compared by two-sample t-tests

ISSN: 1472-6920