What Personality Characteristics Should A Doctor Have?

Doctors should not be restricted to some good qualities such as intellectual abilities before a doctor can be successful in his/her practice; there are some certain qualities that you must possess. Other important qualities are physical attributes, such as physical stamina, good vision, and manual dexterity. Others are emotional, such as the ability to display empathy.

Moreover, doctors must be able to communicate well, manage details, make quick and accurate decisions, and solve complex problems. If you have been so worried about the personal characteristics doctors should have, read further as we have highlighted some of them in this post:

1. Compassion

Compassion simply means the ability to point out with the suffering of others or the ability to imagine oneself in a similar situation. One of the good characteristics of a good medical doctor is the ability to exercise compassion. A lot of people are innately disposed to be compassionate while others are not. However, those that are not instinctively compassionate should not submit their self to defeat. While an individual’s compassion differs, it is a quality that can be developed.

2. Understanding

Understanding as one of the important qualities a doctor should have simply means just knowledge or comprehension. In simple terms, understanding is the ability to think and act with what you know. What does this mean for doctors and their patients? As a medical doctor, you want your patients to understand your recommendations, have a better knowledge of how and when to take their drugs, together with the benefits and side effects, or understand what a particular procedure entails and its potential consequences. In other words, you want your patients to have not only knowledge but also the ability to act and make decisions based on that knowledge. You patients would be happy as they want you to appreciate their knowledge and be able to act accordingly. When you think about it, how much do you actually understand what the patient is trying to tell you?

3. Empathy

In a more scientific sense, empathy is "a social-emotional ability with two distinct components: the first one is effective: this has to do with the ability to share others' feelings and one cognitive: the ability to understand others emotion." Simply put empathy is an emotional identification of the heart and mind. Some of the times, patients may believe that doctors who show warmth are less educated or less competent, and as a result, these doctors are confronted with the trade-off between perceiving them as competent and empathetic. Doctors who showed non-verbal empathetic behavior - such as eye contact, smiles, and uncrossed arms were considered warmer and more competent.

4. Honesty

Being honest with patients should be easy, simply an important part of the routine. Unluckily, modern medicine can lead doctors to gray areas where the most useful thing to say is not true. In fact, one-fifth of doctors said that lying is not necessarily forbidden. There are some doctors who may not tell the whole truth to patients so as not to annoy or make them lose hope. To cut the story short, honesty is always the best policy for communicating with patients, especially if you communicate it with sincere attention and concern.

5. Commitment

You are probably a doctor dedicated to your profession, your patients, and the constant improvement of your personality. This is good news because committed doctors - who believe that the medical profession is not only a job but also a vocation - are less likely to experience burnout. "Commitment as a personal resource protects individuals from the negative effects of stress by allowing them to attach direction and give meaning to their work, without such commitment, a a valuable source of stress protection and its consequences would not be available. As a result of this, commitment is a vital resource that enables an individual to resist the effects of stress and strain in their organizational environments.

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Hi! Well, for me personally, this topic is a little undisclosed, since I studied it for a long time and poorly, but your text was very, very useful, for which I am grateful to you !

 

I came across a wonderful doctor who, in my opinion, has all the necessary qualities of a worthy doctor. He was polite, considerate, calm, honest and sympathetic to my problem and at the same time solved it