Universität zu Köln

Weissenstein, Anne, Ligges, Sandra, Brouwer, Britta, Marschall, Bernhard and Friederichs, Hendrik ORCID: 0000-0001-9671-5235 (2014). Measuring the ambiguity tolerance of medical students: a cross-sectional study from the first to sixth academic years. BMC Fam. Pract., 15. LONDON: BIOMED CENTRAL LTD. ISSN 1471-2296

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Abstract

Background: Tolerance of ambiguity, or the extent to which ambiguous situations are perceived as desirable, is an important component of the attitudes and behaviors of medical students. However, few studies have compared this trait across the years of medical school. General practitioners are considered to have a higher ambiguity tolerance than specialists. We compared ambiguity tolerance between general practitioners and medical students. Methods: We designed a cross-sectional study to evaluate the ambiguity tolerance of 622 medical students in the first to sixth academic years. We compared this with the ambiguity tolerance of 30 general practitioners. We used the inventory for measuring ambiguity tolerance (IMA) developed by Reis (1997), which includes three measures of ambiguity tolerance: openness to new experiences, social conflicts, and perception of insoluble problems. Results: We obtained a total of 564 complete data sets (return rate 90.1%) from medical students and 29 questionnaires (return rate 96.7%) from general practitioners. In relation to the reference groups defined by Reis (1997), medical students had poor ambiguity tolerance on all three scales. No differences were found between those in the first and the sixth academic years, although we did observe gender-specific differences in ambiguity tolerance. We found no differences in ambiguity tolerance between general practitioners and medical students. Conclusions: The ambiguity tolerance of the students that we assessed was below average, and appeared to be stable throughout the course of their studies. In contrast to our expectations, the general practitioners did not have a higher level of ambiguity tolerance than the students did.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Weissenstein, Anne UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Ligges, Sandra UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Brouwer, Britta UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Marschall, Bernhard UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Friederichs, Hendrik UNSPECIFIED orcid.org/0000-0001-9671-5235 UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-448641
DOI:	10.1186/1471-2296-15-6
Journal or Publication Title:	BMC Fam. Pract.
Volume:	15
Date:	2014
Publisher:	BIOMED CENTRAL LTD
Place of Publication:	LONDON
ISSN:	1471-2296
Language:	English
Faculty:	Unspecified
Divisions:	Unspecified
Subjects:	no entry
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language INTOLERANCE; UNCERTAINTY; ATTITUDES; ASSOCIATION; SELECTION; RISK Multiple languages Primary Health Care; Medicine, General & Internal Multiple languages
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/44864