Relationships between self-efficacy beliefs and personal factors in final-year medical students

Medical students entering postgraduate training often feel ill-prepared for clinical practice. This has implications for physician well-being and the quality of patient care. Self-efficacy represents an important contributing factor in the transition process. Identifying student characteristics associated with self-efficacy is important in order to design possible interventions to enhance self-efficacy. Therefore, we assessed the relationship between final-year medical students' general self-efficacy with their personality traits, need for cognitive closure, and medical knowledge in order to identify factors contributing to the assessment and improvement of self-efficacy.