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Doctors may be more neurotic than both patients and the general population, according to two nationally representative Australian surveys.

When it comes to the "Big Five" personality traits, doctors were also significantly more agreeable, conscientious, and extroverted than both the general population and patients, according to Mehdi Ammi, PhD, health economist of Carleton University, in Ottawa, Canada, and the University of Queensland, in Australia, and coauthors.

However, they were significantly less "open" than patients only, the researchers reported in .

"The most surprising [finding] is that the doctors were much more neurotic than the other groups," Ammi told 番茄社区app. "They also have a slightly more external locus of control, meaning they think outcomes of their action depends more on external factors. We would have expected them to be less neurotic or externally controlled, or at least not different."

"We can only speculate about this, but we suspect this might be coming from their jobs being more demanding and stressful than the other groups," Ammi wrote in an email.

A physician's agreeableness and conscientiousness should in theory increase a patient's satisfaction with their care. Study authors nevertheless suggested that their findings may help doctors "better calibrate their judgments of patients and gain insight into factors that influence their patient interactions."

For example, due to their greater perceived conscientiousness, "doctors may overestimate their patients' ability to adhere to treatment plans, hence may not spend enough time detailing the importance of adhering closely to the plan," Ammi said.

"Since doctors on average are more agreeable than patients, they may see patients as less empathic and kind," he added. "Knowing that they are a self-selected group of individuals who are more agreeable may help doctors adapt their expectations of patients' agreeableness."

Moreover, there is danger in failing to recognize and understand their personality differences, the investigators added, as doctors' higher neuroticism "which is related to stress, could lead doctors to see stress as a normal part of life, and, thus, underestimate the impact of stress on patient wellbeing."

To gather these scores, the researchers used data from two nationally representative Australian surveys: the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, and Medicine in Australia: Balancing Employment and Life (MABEL). Respondents were asked to assess their own personality traits in both surveys.

HILDA contains data on 25,358 individuals from the general public between the ages of 20-85 as well as 18,705 patients. MABEL contains data from 19,351 doctors.

Ammi and coauthors decided to focus on the "Big Five" personality traits -- conscientiousness, agreeableness, extroversion, neuroticism, and openness. They defined agreeableness as being empathetic, kind, cooperative, and warm. They defined neurotic as being envious, moody, touchy, jealous, temperamental, and fretful. Conscientious was described as being orderly, systematic, efficient, careful, and organised, whereas being extroverted was described as being talkative, confident, loud, bold, and lively.

They also assessed individuals' beliefs about personal agency, or the placement of the locus of control on internal (e.g., personal action) or external forces (e.g., luck). The study found that physicians had a significantly more external locus of control than the general population, but they did not differ from patients.

There were no personality differences identified among physician specialties.

Ammi said his group's findings could help physicians become more prepared for treating certain patients, especially those individuals who differ in personality traits notably from themselves.

"Future research should focus on neuroticism among doctors in comparison to other population groups and the role it plays in medical practice," the authors wrote.

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