I would say that the average emergency physician tends to be inventive, efficient, energetic, friendly, and confident.

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ACEP News: Vol 30 – No 07 – July 2011

Did you ever have an idea that you thought was really great? A breakthrough, an epiphany. And then, when you started to implement this gift in the world, you realized that it would not work. Me too. I’ve lost count of the number of these little disappointments I have experienced.

There is no shame in this type of failure. Thomas Edison tried many filaments before he perfected his version of the light bulb. Every truly great idea is preceded by a few bad ones.

My most recent bad idea was to suggest that we ask the applicants to the Univerisity of Toledo Medical Center EM residency program to complete a brief personality inventory as part of the interview process. I figured that if we could identify specific personality traits such as compassion, emotional stability, and perseverance, this would be a good thing. The offspring of this idea was to do a longitudinal study.

When I raised this in a meeting, one of the faculty suggested that such a test might turn off prospective residents and make them less likely to rank us highly. So before I devoted much time to my great idea, I spent some time quizzing residents and medical students. Another light bulb tossed in the trash.

I forgot that it is 2011 and not 1981. It is a different generation, and when this generation has an opinion about something, the rest of the world knows quicker than one can mow the yard.

So it was a bad idea. I still have a strong interest in how personality affects our performance in our chosen specialty. Most people in the medical field have made the observation that certain specialties attract certain personality types. Family doctors, for the most part, are friendly, sensitive, and easy-going. Surgeons are, well … not. Neurologists tend to be more introverted and cerebral (duh).

I’ve tried to think of the personality traits that make good emergency physicians. This is more complicated than I imagined. To keep it simple, I referred to the Big 5 Personality test. This test is commonly used in industry, and apparently nobody gets offended. This test looks at openness (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious), conscientiousness (efficient/organized vs. easy-going/careless), extraversion (outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved), agreeableness (friendly/compassionate vs. cold/unkind), and neuroticism (sensitive/nervous vs. secure/confident).