PROOF COVER SHEET Author(s): Paolo Leombruni, Marco Miniotti and Riccardo G. Torta Article title: Personality and attitudes towards the dying patients: An Italian pilot study among medical students Article no:
CMTE_A_786809
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AQ1 Please review the table of contributors below and confirm that the first and last names are structured correctly and that the authors are listed in the correct order of contribution.
Contrib. No.
Prefix
Given name(s)
Surname
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Paolo
Leombruni
2
Marco
Miniotti
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Riccardo G.
Torta
Suffix
AUTHOR QUERIES Q1:
References mentioned in the list are not referred in the text, please refer or delete them.
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LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Personality and attitudes towards the dying patients: An Italian pilot study among medical students Dear Sir Nowadays doctors have to deal not only with death but also with the ‘‘end-of-life’’ stage. That requires specific skills and attitudes, but it remains unclear which are the medical students’ attitudes towards end-of-life care (EOLC). For this reason, we designed a pilot cross-sectional study to investigate the attitudes towards EOLC and their possible relationships with personality traits in a sample of second-year medical students who attended the Turin University. Ethical approval was obtained. We used the Italian version of the Frommelt Attitude Toward the Care of the Dying Scale form-B (FATCOD-B) and the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI). Of the 280 students invited to participate, 165 returned both questionnaires (45.5% male, 54.5% female). Regarding attitudes towards EOLC, students obtained a mean total score of 113.4 (SD ¼ 7.8) (normative data are not available in literature), without significant differences between males and females. Regarding personality profile, we compared total scores with normative data. Observed students scored significantly higher on Harm Avoidance and lower on the Reward Dependence, Cooperativeness and Self-Trascendence
ISSN 0142–159X print/ISSN 1466–187X online/13/000001–1 ß 2013 Informa UK Ltd. DOI: 10.3109/0142159X.2013.786809
dimensions. Females scored significantly higher than males on Harm Avoidance, Reward Dependence, Self-Directedness and Cooperativeness dimensions. Regarding the associations between FATCOD-B and TCI, significant positive associations were found between SelfDirectedness ( p ¼ 0.038) and Cooperativeness ( p ¼ 0.040), while Harm Avoidance showed a significant negative association ( p ¼ 0.002). Despite the limited sample size, this study is the first to show a relationship between personality traits of undergraduate Italian medical students and their attitudes towards the care of dying patients. Highly self-directed and cooperative students, with low Harm Havoidance, probably could develop a more mature character that help them to be more conscious of their own and others’ life conditions and thus to be more prone to care for dying patients. Our results suggest that it may be important to consider also the personality profile for the career counselling of the medical students oriented to the EOLC context. Paolo Leombruni, Marco Miniotti, Riccardo G. Torta, Department of Neurosciences, University of Turin, Turin, Italy. E-mail:
[email protected]
References Cloninger CR, Przybeck TR, Svrakic DM, Wetzel RD. 1994. The Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI): A guide to its development and use. St. Louis, MO: Center for Psychobiology of Personality. Frommelt KH. 1991. The effects of death education on nurses’ attitudes toward caring for terminally ill persons and their families. Am J Hosp Palliat Care 8(5):37–43.
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