A Comparison of Learning Styles among Seven Health Professions: Implications for Optometric Education

ABSTRACT Educational research and development efforts are most often directed at the improvement of teaching while neglecting students’ learning styles. Besides being marginally effective, an exclusive focus on improving teaching methods may lead to reinforcement of inappropriate and nontransferable learning strategies. As such, this study is being undertaken to determine if differences in personality style exist among health profession students. This retrospective-descriptive study tested the null hypothesis “there is no difference in personality traits between osteopathic medicine, pharmacy, physical therapy, physician assistant, dental medicine, optometry and occupational therapy students.” Differences as well as similarities were discovered across all seven professions. Implications for instruction, student retention and practice are provided.