Mind your bedside manners

Abstract

Emotional Intelligence (EI) has been recognized as a critical skill to success in healthcare and its focus on patient-centered care. The ability to listen attentively to a patient, to empathize with a patient's pain, and to be aware of one's own feelings and biases makes the difference between a competent healthcare provider and a truly good one. To train future healthcare providers more effectively in these various soft skills, healthcare education has increasingly moved towards a team-based learning model (TBL) because of its approach to promoting teamwork, interpersonal communication, and critical thinking. This quantitative, pretest-posttest, non-equivalent group design studied the effects of TBL on the trait emotional intelligence, emotional regulation, stress management, and empathy of first-year physician assistant studies students in two graduate schools in the Northeast, one of which was taught exclusively using TBL, and the other of which used a traditional lecture format. Participants took the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue) online, followed by eight weeks of either TBL or lecture-based classes, then participants took the assessment again. Mixed model ANOVA was conducted to analyze pretest to posttest scores, along with the possible effects of age, ethnicity/race, and gender. Analysis revealed a statistically significant decrease in global trait emotional intelligence scores of lecture-based students as compared to TBL-based students, but no significant differences were found in emotional regulation, stress management, or empathy. Covariates of age, ethnicity/race, and gender had no significant effect on the results. These findings suggest that TBL may be useful in developing emotionally intelligent healthcare providers. Future research should consider a longer study that would examine the effects of TBL over the course of a student's PA education and into their first year of practice. Keywords: trait emotional intelligence, emotional regulation, stress management, empathy, TEIQue, team-based learning, healthcare education, physician assistant studies