Personality and learning styles in relation to attitudes towards interprofessional education: a cross-sectional study on undergraduate medical students during their clinical courses

BACKGROUND: Interprofessional Education (IPE) is now included in curricula in universities worldwide. It is known that there are differences in attitudes towards IPE among students, but less is known regarding how students’ personalities and learnings styles correspond with those attitudes. The aim of this study was to investigate whether personality traits and learning styles have any impact on medical students’ attitudes towards IPE. METHODS: Seventy nine medical students in their 9th term (63% females, mean age 29 years) were questioned regarding their attitudes towards IPE according to the Interdisciplinary Education Perception Scale questionnaire, the Kolb’s learning style and Big Five Inventory questionnaires. For all three instruments we used the Swedish translated versions. RESULTS: When investigated with a logistic regression, adjusting for age and gender, there were no significant associations between Big Five inventory, Kolb’s learning style and IEPS, except for the Reflective-Pragmatic learning style that was moderately associated with a higher IEPS score. CONCLUSION: There was no clear correlation between personality, learning style and attitude towards IPE as measured by the IEPS among medical students in our study population. Further investigations would benefit from a combination of qualitative and quantitative design. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-020-02327-7.