ИСТИНА

Objective. Medical professionals make life-changing decisions every day. Whether they take risks or rely on rationality in their decision-making can affect not only their professional development, but also the health and lives of their patients. In order to better understand their decision-making at different stages of medical professional development, the relationship between risk-readiness, rationality and motives was analyzed in medical workers and compared to medical students. Methods. 68 medical workers (33 medical doctors and 35 paramedics), aged 25 to 68 (M=44.9, SD=10.6, 73% women), and 103 medical students (aged 18 to 24 M=19.0, SD=1.0, 73% women) took part in this study. They completed the Personal Decision-Making Factors questionnaire (Kornilova, 2003) and an adapted version of the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule (Edwards, 1959). Results. Medical workers rely more on rationality when making decisions and score higher on autonomy and endurance motives. Medical students demonstrated higher needs for order and intraception (all p<0.05). High endurance needs characterize more rational students (r=0.22,p<0.05). Medical professionals, relying on rationality in their decisions have a higher need for order (r=0.38,p<0.01), but those motivated by aggression (r=-0.27, p<0.05) and dominance (r=-0.31, p<0.05) rely on rationality to a lesser extent in decision-making. In medical students, high aggression, dominance and autonomy needs, with low degradation and order motives are correlated with riskier decision-making. Conclusion. More rational decision-making could be characteristic of professional medical development. Aggression and dominance needs are linked to less rational, more risk-ready decision-making in both medical workers and students. The study was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project 17-06-00130.