Abstract
Introduction: In addition to cognitive intelligence, emotional intelligence (EI) is known to play a major role in producing better doctors. When medical students are exposed to critical incidents in the hospital, it can be emotionally disturbing and such occurrences may be captured in their reflective reports. A series of reflective reports written by third year medical students, soon after exposure to such incidents, in a private medical school in Malaysia, was analysed to determine whether one could capture expression of any of the 25 competencies, inclusive of several social skills or soft skills given in the framework of Mixed Model of EI by Daniel Goleman. Methods: A convenient sample of 148 reflective reports were analysed, using grounded theory approach and discourse analysis. Expression of emotions in these reports were thematically separated into different emotional competencies which were then matched with the framework of Mixed Model of EI. Results: Reflective writing manifesting all five major divisions emotional competencies in Goleman’s framework, namely; self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills were found in many of the reports. Excerpts from of five different reflective reports (only the contextual component without the students’ reflection) manifesting each of these five major divisions of emotional competencies were given as triggers for focus group discussions and three out of the five showed close triangulation. Conclusion: Reflective reports seem to be useful to detect expression of EI. In addition, reflective reports seem to have a potential use as a tool to nurture EI in medical students.
Highlights
In addition to cognitive intelligence, emotional intelligence (EI) is known to play a major role in producing better doctors
The ‘Mixed model’ described by Daniel Goleman is the most widely used model of EI and its framework is based on emotional competencies that fall into two major divisions personal and social competencies
In order to find out whether nurturing of EI occurs in our clinical training environment, I undertook a ‘Grounded Theory’ approach to study and analyse reflective reports which are expected to be based on their experiences and emotional responses to critical incidents that they have been exposed during their on-call sessions (Strauss & Cobin, 1998)
Summary
In addition to cognitive intelligence, emotional intelligence (EI) is known to play a major role in producing better doctors. When medical students are exposed to critical incidents in the hospital, it can be emotionally disturbing and such occurrences may be captured in their reflective reports. A series of reflective reports written by third year medical students, soon after exposure to such incidents, in a private medical school in Malaysia, was analysed to determine whether one could capture expression of any of the 25 competencies, inclusive of several social skills or soft skills given in the framework of Mixed Model of EI by Daniel Goleman. Academic excellence alone cannot gain respect or win the hearts of patients or make good team players. In addition to cognitive intelligence, what makes a good doctor, includes an important attribute called emotional intelligence (EI).
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