Top 5 Pharmacist Personality Traits

In addition to showing ambition, health care professionals should play to their personality strengths in order to maximize their productivity and job satisfaction.

Student pharmacists across 5 Midwestern pharmacy schools recently completed the StrengthsFinder 2.0 survey and received their 5 signature personality themes.

The top 5 themes shown below “suggest that student pharmacists are achievement-oriented, enjoy learning, and value relationships, but may avoid confrontation and find it difficult to sell an idea,” the study authors wrote.

Do you fit these profiles?

1. Achiever (40.8%)

This theme helps explain your drive. No matter how hard you may feel that you deserve a rest, you will feel dissatisfied if the day passes without some form of achievement, no matter how small.

You have an internal fire burning inside you that pushes you to do more and achieve more. After each accomplishment, the fire dwindles for a moment, but it rekindles very soon, forcing you toward the next accomplishment.

This brings you the energy you need to work long hours without burning out. It is the jolt you can always count on to get you started on new tasks and challenges. It is the power supply that causes you to set the pace and define the levels of productivity for your work group.

2. Harmony (36.4 %)

You look for areas of agreement. In your view, there is little to be gained from conflict and friction, so you seek to hold them to a minimum.

When you know that the people around you hold differing views, you try to find the common ground. You try to steer them away from confrontation and toward harmony.

When others strike out, you will willingly modify your own objectives to merge with theirs, as long as their basic values do not clash with yours. When others start to argue about their pet theory or concept, you steer clear of the debate, preferring to talk about practical, down-to-earth matters on which you can all agree.

3. Learner (35.5%)

You love to learn. The process, more than the content or the result, is especially exciting for you.

You are energized by the steady and deliberate journey from ignorance to competence. It enables you to thrive in dynamic work environments where you are asked to take on short project assignments and are expected to learn a lot about the new subject matter in a short period of time.

This theme does not necessarily mean that you seek to become the subject matter expert, or that you are striving for the respect that accompanies a professional or academic credential.

4. Responsibility (27.3%)

This theme forces you to take psychological ownership for anything you commit to. Whether large or small, you feel emotionally bound to follow it through to completion.

If for some reason you cannot deliver, you automatically start to look for ways to make it up to the other person. This near obsession for doing things right is combined with your impeccable ethics to create your reputation of being dependable.

When assigning new responsibilities, people will look to you first because they know it will get done. Your willingness to volunteer may sometimes lead you to take on more than you should.

5. Empathy (24.8%)

You can sense the emotions of those around you. You can feel what they are feeling as though their feelings are your own. Intuitively, you are able to see the world through their eyes and share their perspective.

You do not necessarily agree with each person's perspective or feel pity for each person's predicament, which would be sympathy. You do not necessarily condone the choices each person makes, but you do understand.

This instinctive ability to understand is powerful. You hear the unvoiced questions, and you anticipate the need.