Personality Factors Associated With Resident Performance: Results From 12 Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education Accredited Orthopaedic Surgery Programs

Objectives: To understand the personality factors associated with orthopedic surgery resident performance. Design: A prospective, cross-sectional survey of orthopedic surgery faculty that assessed their perceptions of the personality traits most highly associated with resident performance. Residents also completed a survey to determine their specific personality characteristics. A subset of faculty members rated the performance of those residents within their respective program on 5 dimensions. Multiple regression models tested the relationship between the set of resident personality measures and each aspect of performance; relative weights analyses were then performed to quantify the contribution of the individual personality measures to the total variance explained in each performance domain. Independent samples t-tests were conducted to examine differences between the personality characteristics of residents and those faculty identified as relevant to successful resident performance. Setting: Data were collected from 12 orthopedic surgery residency programs. ¹ 1The full list of participating programs is available from the corresponding author upon request. throughout the United States. The level of clinical care provided by participating institutions varied. Participants: Data from 175 faculty members and 266 residents across 12 programs were analyzed. Results: The personality features of residents were related to faculty evaluations of resident performance (for all, p < 0.01); the full set of personality measures accounted for 4%-11% of the variance in ratings of resident performance. Particularly, the characteristics of agreeableness, neuroticism, and learning approach were found to be most important for explaining resident performance. Additionally, there were significant differences between the personality features that faculty members identified as important for resident performance and the personality features that residents possessed. Conclusion: Personality assessments can predict orthopedic surgery resident performance. However, results suggest the traits that faculty members value or reward among residents could be different from the traits associated with improved resident performance.