Profession
Personality can guide specialty choice
■ An occasional snapshot of current facts and trends in medicine.
Quick View. Posted Dec. 10, 2007
Emergency medicine residents are risk-takers compared with their family medicine counterparts.
According to a small study presented at the American College of Emergency Physicians' annual meeting in October, 87 emergency medicine residents scored higher than 77 family medicine residents on questions that measured risk-related personality traits and risk-taking behaviors.
"There's a certain personality type that thinks very well under pressure and thrives in crisis conditions," said Elizabeth Bascom, MD, an emergency medicine physician at St. John Hospital and Medical Center in Detroit, who conducted the study. "We are in a specialty where we can make a difference in a single life in a moment of crisis, and that's what draws people to emergency medicine."
Source: American College of Emergency Physicians
