Medical Students and Doctors’ Tolerance of Ambiguity: Its Association with Specialty Choices and Professional Quality of Life

BACKGROUND: Medical practice is inherently ambiguous and uncertain, arising from limitations of knowledge, diagnostic problems, complexities of treatment, and unpredictability of patient response. The physicians' ability to tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty has been proved to associate with specialty choice, and to have a great impact on professional well-being and clinical practice. However, Research into medical students and doctors' tolerance of ambiguity is hampered by poor clarity and inadequate measurement scales.OBJECTIVES: By integrating ambiguity tolerance assessment and specialty choice framework, this 2-years proposal aims to 1) to adapt a newly developed Tolerance of Ambiguity in Medical Students and Doctors (TAMSAD) scale and to pilot test its validity and reliability; 2) to test the hypothesis that ambiguity tolerance is associated with specialty choice among medical students and influences subsequent coping and professional quality of life among physicians. METHODS: This is a two-year project, consisted of three phases. In Phase 1, the original 41-items TAMSAD will be translated and employed as item pools for the development of ambiguity tolerance measure. A battery of questionnaires including TAMSAD will be developed and administered to 200 undergraduate medical students. Psychological properties such as reliability will be calculated and concurrent validity will be assessed by comparing TAMSAD scores differences between younger and senior students. The instrument will be used in the following studies to assess tolerance of ambiguity. In Phase 2, a total of 90 physicians from different medical specialties with different levels of expertise were administered a set of questionnaires measuring individual ability to tolerate ambiguity, personal factors affecting the choice of health specialty, and perceived levels of professional quality of life. A linear regression analysis will be performed to examine which variables predict the professional quality of life. In Phase 3, a longitudinal research design methodology will be used to investigate the fit of decision theory to specialty choice. Thirty residents limited to 2-year seniority will be interviewed and surveyed with the insight from the results of previous phases. After 6 months, they will be surveyed again to investigate their adaptation process of specialty practice. The results will help to validate the decision-making theory and to give suggestion for making decision aid aiming at the preparation of specialist choice for medical students The decision-making assistance.CONCLUSIONS: This project will help to develop a Traditional Chinese version of ambiguity tolerance for medical students and doctors, and to demonstrate the influence of ambiguity tolerance on specialty choice and work-related wellbeing. Findings from the present study will have important implications for medical education and physician allocation. Given the important role of ability to tolerate ambiguity has on specialty choice and subsequent work-related coping process, it would be worth paying particular attention to such a skill in medical education settings.

Project ID:PF10708-0957
External Project ID:MOST107-2410-H182-016-SSS