Building emotional intelligence in medical trainees

Medical schools around the world are working to help students develop resilience to not only make them better physicians but also healthier individuals. At Cardiff University in the United Kingdom, they are accomplishing this with a new program that focuses on building emotional intelligence. At theInternational Conference on Physician Health ™ in Boston, Debbie Cohen, MD, OBE, an occupation health physician and director of student support at the Centre for Psychosocial and Disability Research at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom, explained the theory behind Cardiff ’s emotional intelligence development program and how it works.“We have to provide structures to both manage and support our learners,” Dr. Cohen said. “That is becoming a priority. And within that … we have to have both systems to provide the health and well-being for our learners.”“What an opportunity to think about how we might change those structures,” she said. “It’s a challenge, because what we’re talking about is changing behavior.” Dr. Cohen outlines two ways of thinking: You can either teach people by telling them what to do and give them interventions like put your personal things aside, get enough sleep and make sure you get enough exercise, she said. “Or, you can try and bring about change, and that’s about guiding them…. Guide them to understand more about their emotions to enable better use of their own inherent skills and learn when and how to use skills and...
Source: AMA Wire - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Source Type: news