Modern Medicine Lacks Emotional Intelligence

Accompanying with the enormous technological progress, medicine as a modern science has been affected in many positive ways. However, the timeless tradition and the everlasting secret of medicine is merely care giving. Modern medicine has been relying too much on technology, which is cool, but also very cold from a humanistic aspect. All the patients are presented by a series of numbers via binary signals of the internet. Nowadays, medicine is more about running tests and diagnosing based on numbers, as opposed to investigating symptoms upon the physician’s observational skills and comprehensive knowledge. As bedside caring becomes less concerned as it was in the old days, the diminishing of the sense of caring in medical professionals appears as a side effect. There is no doubt that technology enables medical professionals to perform all types of fancy tasks, though it is their offering of compassion that comforts the patients the most. And this quintessence of medical practice ought not to be overlooked at any point of the history of medicine.

Prominently featured in the mission statements of virtually of every medical school and medical institution in the world is the call for empathetic doctors. These institutions wish to train medical professionals that possess qualities of sympathy and compassion, and hospitals wish to employ health professionals that showcase similar qualities. The reality, however, is starkly different, as physicians, jaded by what they have seen in the medical world, lose the qualities that drove them to medicine in the first place. In Frank Huyler’s “The Blood of Strangers,” a collection of short stories from his time as a physician in the emergency room, Huyler uses the literary techniques of irony and imagery to depict the reality of the world of a medical professional. While Huyler provides several examples of both techniques in his accounts, moments from “A Difference of Opinion” and “The Secret” in particular stand out. Huyler uses irony and imagery in these two pieces to describe how medical professionals have lost their sense of compassion and empathy due to being jaded and desensitized by the awful incidents they have witnessed during their careers.

Emotional intelligence refers to an ability to recognize the meanings of emotion and its therapeutic relationships, and to reasons for problem-solving in nursing. This is involved in the capacity to recognize emotions, adapt emotion-related to feelings, understand the information of those emotions, and manage it. Reflective practice is a process by which one stops and think about their practice, knowingly analyse ones decision making and clarifying ones thoughts and doubts. As a result, one may modify ones actions, behaviour, treatments and learning needs. Therapeutic relationship, also known as the helping team,

All too often in regards to medical treatment, physicians are taught everything known about the scientific approaches to disease but still fail to realize the important details of how the disease impacts the individual. Many physicians do not show empathy to their patients and instead just focus on the current diagnosis and the probable outcome. This creates a divide between patient and provider and can even lead to negative feelings of the patient that far outweigh the diagnosis itself. A feeling of hopelessness and despair may accompany the empty feeling that comes with failing to explore the patient’s perspective on care. In this essay, Parrish states,

A patient is a human being. Illness disturbs biological, social, psychological elements that make the patient human. It is not enough to centre and diagnoses and decisions on scientific data and empirical fact; medicine is about much more. The focus of this paper is to make the argument that the practice of medicine is a discipline that requires human empathy as well as scientific data and empirical fact to establish diagnoses with emphasis on five components of the physician-patient relationship: patient’s experience of illness, physician-patient communication, and proficiency of end of life care, medical ethics and spiritual growth. This position will be supported through the film “Wit (Nichols & Brokaw, 2002)” through the character Vivian Bearing 's revelation that illustrates a patient’s struggle with death and in the process exposes the distinction between medicine and science.

My experience and skills are surpassed only by my enthusiasm to effectively meet the challenges before me. I am a highly capable, motivated, and energetic individual that enjoys working with others towards successful solutions. My leadership style incorporates motivation through positive feedback and support plus straightforwardness and open communication that builds trust and loyalty among my peers and patients alike. Throughout my personal experiences, education, and athletic career I have honed the ability to be a leader in times where others look for leadership. Leadership is not given; a confident, competent, and motivated individual takes leadership of a situation.

The movie “The Doctor” captures the shortcomings of a mechanized health care industry. Dr. Jack McKee is a gifted, however, arrogant, and self centered surgeon who cares little about the emotional welfare of his patients; treating them with a callous attitude, and examining them as specimen. Out of the four models of physician/patient relationship, Dr. McKee exemplified the Paternalistic model, the least ideal model for physician/patient interactions. He makes decisions for the patient

The video presented the ethics and boundaries and factors that affect those boundaries such as addiction, abuse, absent role models, and patients assuming the professional shares the same feelings as he or she does. Then the video discusses issues the doctor may incur such as “special treatment” of patients, time management, poor awareness of feelings, and the response to the patient.

Nursing 501 was a great way to start my graduate school education. Learning about ethics and health policy really allowed me to reflect on different aspects of healthcare that make up this complex system. To start off I was introduced to the different roles in advanced practice nursing and their influence on healthcare policies. This provided me with an idea of how I will make an influence on the healthcare system as a Clinical Nurse Leader and the similarities and differences between my future role as a CNL and other APNs.

In recent years there has been a movement in nursing to further understand the many terms (concepts) that are used. Concepts in nursing often seem vague or appear to have ambiguous meanings. For the purpose of this paper, we will take a deeper look at one specific concept, emotional intelligence, and examine a peer reviewed article that utilizes the Walker and Avant method to deconstruct the meaning. Emotional intelligence is asks the nurse to look at their own feelings and the feelings of others to achieve a successful nurse-patient interaction. Lastly, this paper will show how emotional intelligence can be applied in practice.

emotional aspects along with the social and spiritual aspects of an individual. However, with the advances seen in technology there has been a refocus of medicine from it’s caring, service oriented model to more of a technically oriented model that focuses on a cure. (Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings). There are good components of both of these models however encompassing them both would provide a more well rounded approach to treating the entire person today.

The “feelings rule” is shown in how doctors should care for “sick” people. Being calm and serious at the same time are “proper” emotions doctors need to express while in a hospital

Emotional Intelligence: How can it Improve Healthcare Health Communication covers a broad range communication disciplines that includes public health campaigns, medical marketing, health literacy and education, and interpersonal communication between the healthcare providers and patients. According to Daniel Goleman in an interview with John O’Neil emotional intelligence “includes knowing what your feelings are and using your feelings to make good decisions in like.” Emotional intelligence is managing one’s moods and impulses, being motivated, hopeful, and optimistic, having empathy and using social skills. (O'Neil, 1996) The patient-provider interpersonal relationship is directly affected by the emotional intelligence of the provider and the

Imagine you are injured or sick and have sought a doctor’s help. Although you trusted your doctor, something, something seemingly very in control of the doctor, went wrong. You are angry and confused, but also think of the commonality of medical malpractice. So, why do doctors, who are supposed to help, harm? Though many flaws influence it, malpractice can be, and often is unintentional. Most doctors aren’t trained to harm their patients. Inexperience and lack of medical discovery led to unintentional suffering of the patient. Personal flaws, like lack of willingness to abandon previous medical methods and shortcomings in communication also harm patients. Further reasons why doctors harm are socio-medical understandings that breed hate, prejudices stemming from a society’s belief about certain people, such as the medical practice under the Nazi regime. Additionally, displayed in the case of Ignác Semmelweis, judgement of one to oneself can be detrimental to any progress one’s ideas could make. We will examine these concepts through Jerome Groopman’s “Flesh-and-Blood Decision Making”, Sherwin Nuland’s The Doctors’ Plague and Barbara Bachrach’s “In the Name of Public Health”. Those who practice medicine are, unfortunately, unfree from the imperfections that plague all of humanity. Through these intimate and varied faults, doctors do harm.

Reflecting feelings and content is hugely important in a clinical setting in order to make implicit and