Determining Nurses’ Personality Traits and The Affecting Factors

Abstract

Purpose: This study was conducted to determine the personality traits of nurses and the affecting factors. Material and Methods: The descriptive and cross-sectional research was carried out with 1200 nurses working in public and university hospitals in four cities in the Eastern Anatolia region of Türkiye. Introductory Information Form and “The Big Five Inventory (BFI)” were used as data collection tools. Number, percentage, mean, standard deviation, Independent Samples t Test, One-way ANOVA test and Kruskal Wallis-H test were used to analyse the data. Results: The mean age of the nurses in the study was 29.74±7.61 years, %77,8 of them were women, 50.1% of them were married, 54.8% were university graduates and 52,0% had less than 5 years of work experience in the profession. Their total mean BFI score was 3.48±0.42, and the mean scores from the subscales of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness were 3.44±0.71, 3.82±0.66, 3.73±0.67, 2.90±0.60 and 3.50±0.67, respectively. Statistically significant differences were found between nurses’ age, gender, marital status, education level, length of work experience in the profession, working hours, the place where they lived most of their lives, the education level of their mothers and fathers, birth order and the general structure of their families and the mean score from BFI subscales (p<0. 05). Conclusion: Nurses’ agreeableness and conscientiousness personality trait scores were the highest and the emotional instability scores were the lowest. A significant relationship was found between the nurses’ personality traits and some of their personal and professional traits. It may be suggested to evaluate the personality traits of nurses in processes such as recruitment, field selection, and manager assignment.