Emotional intelligence of surgical and critical care specialists

Sarah Benson¹, Martin Lum², Bruce Findlay³

¹ General Surgeons Australia, Melbourne, Australia
² Department of Human Services, Melbourne, Australia
³ Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia

An emotional intelligence (EI) measure was applied to a sample of 143 medical professionals (68 surgeons, 46 surgical trainees, and 29 critical care specialists. Using the Swinburne University Emotional Intelligence Test participants responded to a questionnaire package that included either the individual version (surgeons and trainees) or the workplace version (critical care specialists) and a measure of Social Desirability. Results suggest that overall, the medical professionals differed from population norms, scoring significantly lower on Emotions Direct Cognition (use of emotional information in decision-making and problem-solving) and significantly higher on Emotional Control (the ability to effectively control strong emotional states). However, a correlation with Social Desirability scores suggests a possible overstatement of levels of Emotional Control for the surgical group. Competence with the emotional content of medical work contributes to clinical effectiveness and communication skills; whilst poor emotional competence may contribute to workplace stress, burnout and clinical errors. While these results were not surprising, given the training of medical specialists in maintaining a degree of detached concern, it was concluded that it would be desirable for medical educators to focus on the development of training interventions targeted at increasing overall emotional intelligence, but especially at increasing the recognition of emotional information and its importance in decision-making.
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