Nature or Nurture? Have Health Care Professionals Always Been Good People or Do They Only Become So During Their Professional Career? An Empirical Study of Personality Styles in Health Care Professionals and the General Population

Healthcare professionals (HCPs) need certain personality traits to cope with the emotional and interpersonal challenges of their profession. This study investigated the personality styles of HCPs using the Personality Style and Disorder Inventory (PSDI). It focused on functional and dysfunctional patterns. Participants were 6,803 experienced and young HCPs (aged 18 to 30 years) as well as students and a normative population from German-speaking countries. Robust statistical analyses revealed significant style differences between HCPs and the general population. HCPs scored lower on the styles "willful/paranoid", "spontaneous/borderline", "reserved/schizoid" and "ambitious/narcissistic". HCPs exhibit greater emotional stability, empathy and relationship orientation. Young HCPs showed styles that were almost identical to those of experienced professionals, while students showed significantly less structured styles. The cluster analysis identified three distinct functional clusters characterized by a) resilient, socially competent, b) impulsive-dysregulated and c) inhibited-internalizing personality styles. These results indicate that personality traits of HCPs develop through early professional socialization and not solely through age. This underscores the importance of personality traits for professional development in healthcare and the quality of patient care.