EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
IN
MEDICINE

Leadership Reflection Paper #2
July 16, 2011 Emotional intelligence, the ability to recognize one’s own feelings and those of others, is well documented as an important, yet frequently absent, facet of leadership. This leadership skill is utilized in both team interplay and individual encounters between leaders and followers to unite toward common goals. In the medical field, in particular, emotional intelligence is a highly utilized asset regarding leadership roles as physician-patient relationships rely heavily on emotional perception and response. When I reflect on my own personal use of emotional intelligence over the years I have spent practicing medicine, I realize how important and vital the skill has become in my life since dealing with disease processes and disease afflicted patients pose both scientific and emotional needs. As a caregiver, I’ve had to deal with both issues simultaneously and integrate my responses to patients on both levels. As I think about my own maturation process in this arena, I have developed two conclusions. First, I feel that personal emotions and emotional responses are inherent to our personality types. This may be due to our genetic makeup or our past childhood formative experiences but nonetheless seem to be established by adulthood. Not every person has the same emotional outflow to a specific set of circumstances. Second, I feel that recognition and acknowledgement of others’ feelings and emotions are partly a learned behavior skill. While an innate emotional response may occur from an observation of another, the ability to process the emotion and appropriately react to it does seem to be a dynamic educational process. A truly polished leader has the ability to recognize another’s feelings, process their needs, and react in a fashion that promotes successful goal accomplishment. Specific personal experiences that come to mind for me regarding this skill involve my past and present dealings with women diagnosed with breast cancer. While I’ve had to deal with a multitude of differing surgical problems throughout my career, the breast cancer patient was the most difficult challenge for me to confidently handle. A woman with breast cancer presents with both physical and emotional needs that are intimately intertwined together. As a clinician, I had to figure out a way to delicately balance my presentation of necessary medical information regarding surgical options with a need to console the woman regarding her emotional needs. At first this was an extremely difficult task for me as medical training fails to address these necessary skills. These women are frequently lost, upset, depressed, and alone. They look for a clinician that will lead them to a safe harbor where they can find comfort, safety, security, and compassion in the recent storm that descended upon their lives. Emotional intelligence plays a major role in these relationships. I had to learn quickly how to lead this particular patient type to a better place both surgically and emotionally. I realized that acknowledgement of their emotional needs was just as important as their physical requirements and, to the contrary, ignorance or avoidance of their feelings would be a major obstacle regarding my leadership goals for them. Too often physicians are one dimensional and act as they were trained to do which is to handle the physical needs of the patient. This particular educational failure often results in physician suppression of the critical emotional component of the physician-patient relationship. Although the breast cancer patient may represent an extreme example of the need for emotional intelligence in leadership situations, I feel the lessons learned from it apply to all aspects of life, both personal and professional. Leadership success, while encompassing many skills, requires balance and harmony among all personality characteristics, including emotional traits. In this specific example, validation of emotions is necessary to establish trust and trust is necessary to effectively lead. I, unfortunately, had to learn this skill through on-the-job training but now fully realize the critical importance of emotional intelligence in leadership development.