2019 HSC Section 2 - Practice Management

The American Journal of Surgery, Vol 209, No 1, January 2015

As with any study, the present study has several limitations. Selection biases in particular pose threats to the generalizability of the study findings. The low response rate raises the concern that the resident physicians who chose to participate in the study are not representative of their respective groups, although a response rate of 42.8% is considered acceptable in the medical education survey literature. 31 The low response rate may be due in part to the length of the TEIQue, which takes 20 to 25 minutes to complete. Surgical residents in particular had a low response rate (38.5%), which increases the probability that the respondents do not accurately represent the larger group. One possible explanation for the disparity in response rate between surgical residents and residents in the other programs is that the surgical residents may have fewer opportunities to complete an online survey at a computer when trying to balance operating room and ward work demands. 32 Another limitation is that the resi- dent physicians recruited to participate in this study are from large academic residency programs; therefore, it is unclear if the findings of this study can be extended to trainees from smaller or community-based training pro- grams. Additionally, the 3 specialty groups were signifi- cantly different with regard to their gender composition. Notably, the pediatrics group comprised nearly 80% women. Although this figure is similar to the national pro- portion of female pediatrics residents nationally, it intro- duces the possibility that the pediatrics profile is skewed by the effect of gender in addition to that of specialty. 33,34 Hopefully, additional studies will expand the study of EI to other specialty groups as well. Finally, the use of a trait EI tool, intended to illuminate the characteristic manner in which an individual experiences and perceives emotion, does not provide EI scores of the actual performance of resident physicians in the management of emotion or emotional situations. This study did not include any behavioral evaluations of residents, so the relationships between TEIQue EI scores and resident physician work performance characteristics cannot yet be determined. Extension of the present study to incorporate evaluation of the work performance character- istics of participating resident physicians could contribute to current knowledge of the predictive power of EI on clinical performance, especially because much of the interest in EI in medical training pertains to its potential value as a predictor of performance either on the under- graduate or graduate medical education level. 6,14,15,35,36 The relationship between EI and the ACGME competency of interpersonal and communication skills could be studied using performance measures such as patient satisfaction ratings or 360 evaluations from other team members, including more senior or junior house staff, nurses, case managers, and medical students. A relationship between EI and professionalism might be similarly studied using data from patient complaints, faculty evaluations, or the need for behavioral remediation. 15

Conclusions

This study describes the EI of resident physicians across 3 specialties. When compared with a general population sample, each specialty demonstrated a distinct EI profile of relative strengths and areas of potential further develop- ment. Additionally, there was a statistically significant main effect of specialty on particular TEIQue domains. These findings indicate that to support well-rounded development, residents of different specialties would benefit from tar- geted educational interventions that emphasize different aspects of EI. Stepwise linear regression demonstrated that age, but not training level, has a statistically significant but small predictive relationship with global EI. These data may hint that it is the accumulation of life experience across time and not necessarily previous residency activ- ities which lead to the development of higher EI. Further research should examine whether EI is predictive of resident physician acquisition of ACGME competencies and whether the targeted development of EI in the context of graduate medical education leads to improvement in the clinical performance of trainees. 1. Goleman D. Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam Books; 1995. p. xiv. 352 p . 2. Goleman D. What makes a leader? Harv business Rev 1998;76: 93–102 . 3. McClelland DC. Identifying competencies with behavioral-event inter- views. Psychol Sci 1998;9:331–9 . 4. Van Rooy DL, Viswesvaran C. Emotional intelligence: a meta-analytic investigation of predictive validity and nomological net. J Vocational Behav 2004;65:71–95 . 5. Schrimpf L, Trief P. Emotional intelligence and psychiatry residents: does the PRITE measure emotional intelligence? Acad Psychiatry 2013;37:339–41 . 6. Lin DT, Kannappan A, Lau JN. The assessment of emotional intelligence among candidates interviewing for general surgery residency. J Surg Educ 2013;70:514–21 . 7. Carr SE. Emotional intelligence in medical students: does it correlate with selection measures? Med Educ 2009;43:1069–77 . 8. Weng HC, Chen HC, Chen HJ, et al. Doctors’ emotional intel- ligence and the patient-doctor relationship. Med Educ 2008;42: 703–11 . 9. Jensen AR, Wright AS, Lance AR, et al. The emotional intelli- gence of surgical residents: a descriptive study. Am J Surg 2008;195:5–10 . 10. Lewis NJ, Rees CE, Hudson JN, et al. Emotional intelligence medical education: measuring the unmeasurable? Adv Health Sci Educ Theor Pract 2005;10:339–55 . 11. Borges NJ, Stratton TD, Wagner PJ, et al. Emotional intelligence and medical specialty choice: findings from three empirical studies. Med Educ 2009;43:565–72 . 12. Kilpatrick CC, Doyle PD, Reichman EF, et al. Emotional intelligence and selection to administrative chief residency. Acad Psychiatry 2012; 36:388–90 . 13. Satterfield J, Swenson S, Rabow M. Emotional intelligence in internal medicine residents: educational implications for clinical performance and burnout. Ann Behav Sci Med Educ 2009;14:65–8 . References

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