Affiliations 

  • 1 Universiti Sains Malaysia
MyJurnal

Abstract

Personality researchers have proposed five dimensions of personality that are extroversion,
conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness. The five-factor model offers a theoretical basis for medical educators to understand the impact of personality traits on medical students’ psychological health during stressful medical training. This study attempted to investigate on which personality traits have favour impact on psychological health of medical students during a stressful period – the final examination of first year. A cross-sectional study was conducted on medical students in a public medical school. Personality traits were measured by USM Personality Inventory and psychological health parameters were measured by 21-item Depression Anxiety Stress Scale. Pearson correlation test was performed by SPSS to determine correlation between personality trait and psychological health parameters. A total of 174 medical students participated in this study. Extroversion (rstress = –0.44, ranxiety = -0.41, rdepression = –0.56), conscientiousness (rstress= –0.38, ranxiety =–0.36, rdepression= –0.51), agreeableness (rstress = –0.28, ranxiety = –0.25, rdepression = –0.47) and openness
(rstress = –0.34, ranxiety = –0.31, rdepression = –0.47) negatively correlated with stress, anxiety and depression. Neuroticism (rstress = 0.53, ranxiety = 0.47, rdepression = 0.60) positively correlated with stress, anxiety and depression. Extroversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness and openness demonstrated favourable impact and neuroticism demonstrated unfavourable impact on stress, anxiety and depression of the medical students during a stressful period.