Abstract

Effective coping strategies are of great importance for trainees actively navigating the challenges and stresses of graduate medical education (GME). Although there is increasing emphasis on the concept of emotional intelligence (EI) in medical curricula, the range of behavioral skills learned in typical EI training may not be sufficient when dealing with extreme stress – something that healthcare students in general, and GME trainees as a subset, continue to struggle with. Under the conditions of extreme stress, multiple competing priorities and high cognitive load, even those with excellent command of EI skills may not be able to universally maintain sufficient emotional control. This, in turn, exposes a significant opportunity for further understanding and development in this dynamically evolving area of investigation. Increasing amount of research suggests that a unique skill set exists, known as ‘coping intelligence’ (CI), that may help fill the gap under the conditions of extreme stress and significantly elevated cognitive load. This chapter will discuss CI as a unique and novel concept, further exploring the possibility of introducing this new construct into the realm of GME.

Highlights

  • The individual ability to cope with the acute stresses and demands within both professional and personal domains is an important and often overlooked construct, especially in the context of organizational functioning and the ability to appropriately process and respond to external stimuli [1–5]

  • In the era of near-universal embrace of the concept of ‘emotional intelligence’ (EI) and related topics [6], it is becoming increasingly apparent that the experience of repeated ‘micro-stresses’ and the associated emotional trauma may contribute to the development of burnout and other behavioral health sequelae [7–11]

  • The result is the emergence of the concept of ‘coping intelligence’ (CI) which can be defined as a collection of “efficient individual ways of managing life stress” [20]

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Summary

Introduction

The individual ability to cope with the acute stresses and demands within both professional and personal domains is an important and often overlooked construct, especially in the context of organizational functioning and the ability to appropriately process and respond to external stimuli [1–5]. When compounded by acute elevations in stress levels and cognitive load, as often experienced by graduate medical education (GME) trainees, a set of environmental conditions may create a fertile substrate for both momentary (and at times sustained) loss of emotional control [12–15]. Medical trainees, both graduate and undergraduate, are among the most affected and burnout-prone groups [6, 11]. We will propose a conceptual foundation whereby CI can be thought of as a logical extension of EI, both being functionally important components of the ‘coping continuum’

Methods
Coping intelligence: a logical extension of emotional intelligence?
Current understanding of coping approaches
Identifying efficient and inefficient coping strategies in trainees
Efficient versus inefficient coping: importance in life satisfaction
Mentoring to improve coping skills
Coping intelligence in the context of resiliency
Empathy and compassion: key components of the overall matrix of coping
Limitations
10. Conclusion
Full Text
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