The purpose of this study was to investigate possible differences in personality, psychomotor abilities, spirituality, and teamwork between surgeons and residents, depending on their work experience.
Equal level of extroversion in both surgeons and residents was emphasized, what is in accordance with the results of other studies indicating that doctors who work in the same field of the medical profession tend to behave similarly (34). Extroverted individuals often choose professions where they can make social contacts, and where they are more motivated by the rewards obtained for better performance (35).
The study investigating the association between personality traits, and career choices among physicians, showed personality differences between medical career and specialty choices, indicating that such differences may develop during education (36). Other researches confirmed consistent relations between personality and academic/professional job performances (35, 37). Higher extroversion and carefulness of surgeons were prognostic factors for specialty choice (38). This indicates that introverted individuals rarely have the opportunity to be enrolled in the screening choice process.
Better verbal skills may benefit job candidates to present themselves better during job interviews (39). Extroverted individuals make more social relationships, seem to be happier, try to make a better impression on their milieu and are generally more socially successful (40). Extroversion with a low level of neuroticism and a high degree of intelligence is also associated with a speed of mental processing (41). Introverted surgeons are more careful and less risk-averse (42). They process information longer in long-term memory and planning, emphasize the event as a whole, and do not show reduced effects of learning, but they have slightly lower teamwork success (43). Introversion was more emphasized among the medical undergraduates in China, while their European counterparts were more extroverted (44). Probably, traditional, cultural and political society dissimilarities, as well as personality differences may be responsible for this.
Psychomotor abilities are an important predictor of a work success of healthcare professionals. Individuals who were more exposed to video games or who played a musical instrument expressed better efficiency (46). However, only few studies examined an impact of these abilities on medical personnel. Although previous studies have shown differences in the psychomotor skills in relation to experience and age (7, 45), our study did not confirm that, presumably due to relatively small number of respondents enrolled. Additionally, only male and younger surgeons and residents participated in the study, making the investigated sample relatively homogeneous, since age difference between the groups was only 10 years in average.
A study on a group of ophthalmic surgeons who performed a simulated microsurgical testing showed no difference in response time to visual stimuli related to surgical experience (47), what is confirmed by our results.
There was no significant difference between surgeons and residents in the time of performing the task, in the number of errors, and in the time spent in error using the Mirror Star Tracing test. However, the same test was used to confirm the loss of accuracy and precision during the prolonged surgery in fatigued surgeons (48).
Agility is defined as the ability to manipulate surgical instruments with a specific mental representation of the task (49). Therefore, examination of the manual abilities among the surgeons is more about the skills than the accuracy of performing a particular task.
Our data indicate that finger skills are more accomplished in surgeons than residents. However, difference in the finger skills of the dominant hand compared to the non-dominant hand was found in both surgeons and residents, with the task being better performed by the dominant hand.
Hand tremor hasn't been shown to affect the ability to perform microsurgeries, because modern surgical instruments are designed to reduce the tremor effects and to enhance the accuracy of surgery (50). There was no significant difference between surgeons and residents in the assessing of the movement stability, and stillness of the hand.
Up to our knowledge, this research is the first one in Bosnia and Herzegovina that examines and compares extrinsic and intrinsic religiosity between surgeons and residents. There are only a few studies investigating the spirituality of a medical staff. A national U.S. survey showed that overwhelming majority of doctors believe in God, while simple majority of them believed in some kind of afterlife and were convinced that religion influences implementation of their knowledge in medicine (51). Another study confirmed that religiosity has an important role in surgeons’ clinical practice (52).
In this study surgeons and residents expressed higher extrinsic than intrinsic religiosity. Overwhelming extrinsic religiosity found in our study can probably be explained by the trend towards traditional society-encompassing religiosity, which is typical for our culture nowadays.
Extrinsic religiosity is the traditional heritage of the environment we live in, according to the expectations that a person should practice the religious rites of the religion to which he/she belongs. These results indicating higher level of religiosity in this educated population were non-expectant, because religious beliefs tend to decrease as education and income level increase in general.
Successful surgery and healthcare are highly dependent on effective teamwork. According to our results, the differences in the teamwork efficiency between surgeons and residents were not found in any of the examined characteristics. The studies of healthcare teamwork efficiency were mostly hampered by the lack of empirical data, and a distinctive method of teamwork efficiency measuring, what made comparison between them more difficult and complex (53). However, it seemed that surgeons and residents may equally develop technical skills of a teamwork (54).
In conclusion, main differences were not obtained between surgeons and residents in almost all investigated parameters. The younger residents were probably more technically adept because they were exposed to the various technological challenges from early childhood that require manual skills and prompt cognitive response. Therefore, they apparently compensated for the lack of experience in such a way.
However, it is possible that the differences between the groups would be more obvious if older and more experienced surgeons were included. Additional limitation of this pilot study arises from relatively small series, and due to data obtaining from a non-random sample. Hence, further studies on this topic on a larger sample and scale should certainly be needed.