Human values profile of physicians in professional training

Abstract

Introduction: There are few studies on human values profile through measurement of the dominant interests of the personality in physicians in training, they found that the major interests of health care workers are the social and the economic, and their main motivations the moral and the legal.

Objective: We identified the human values profile of physicians in training based on the dominant interests of the personality.

Method: Descriptive---cross-sectional study. 187 physicians in training were included of whom 96 (51.3%) were men and 91 (48.7%) women; 66 (35.3%) were undergraduate physicians and 121 (64.7%) postgraduate physicians. The mean age was 25.49±3.4 years. We applied the Allport test, which evaluated the interests or basic motives based on 6 categories: Economic, social, theoretical, religious, aesthetic and political. Each category was measured as very high, high, average, low and very low. The data analysis was performed using descriptive and inferential statistics.

Results: The personality interests that predominated were «theoretical» with «very high» (51.3%) and «religious» with «very low» (54.5%). When compared by gender, in females predominated theoretical (62 vs. 34; P=.004) and political (11 vs 3; P=.033) with «very high» and the economic interest with «high» compared with males (27 vs. 12; P=.016); in males the aesthetic interest predominated with «very high» (12 vs 2; P=.008), social interest in «high» (17 vs. 7; P=.041), and the political interest in the «very low» category compared to females (8 vs 1; P=.020).

Conclusions: In the human values profile, the dominant personality interest was the theoretical, and the lowest was the religious, we found differences in them only by gender.