Plenary2-05: SURGICAL FACULTY EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IS ASSOCIATED WITH MEDICAL STUDENT EVALUATIONS
Holly B Weis, Joshua J Weis, Audra T Clark, Luis R Taveras, Tarik D Madni, Rebecca H Napier, Rohit R Sharma, Herbert J Zeh III, Kareem R Abdelfattah; University of Texas Southwestern

Introduction: Emotional intelligence (EQ) is recognized as a critical component for success in business. Recently, EQ has also been gaining interest in medical education due to associations with burnout and depression. However, little is known regarding how a physicians’ EQ affects evaluations received from peers or subordinates. We embarked on this study to delineate the relationship between surgeons’ EQ and scores on medical student evaluations.

Methods: During a pilot faculty development initiative, 18 surgical faculty were asked to complete a 27-item, EQ assessment (Emotional Intelligence Appraisalâ). EQ scores were compared to aggregate medical student evaluations from the MedHub system. The evaluations contained 14 Likert scale items on a nine-point scale (1-worst to 9-best). Average ratings for individual items were combined into an overall average normalized to a 10-point scale. Faculty signed informed consent to release their EQ scores. Faculty were excluded if they were no longer with the department or had no medical student evaluations. The relationship between EQ and Likert ratings was analyzed using Pearson’s r, and p<0.05 was considered significant.

Results: Eleven surgeons were eligible, and 8 were successfully enrolled. Subjects were mostly male (87.5%) and white (62.5%) with a mean of 18.6±3.7 years in practice. The average number of medical student evaluations per faculty member was 36.9±10.5. Mean EQ score for faculty was 79.25±3.6 (100-point scale).

Faculty EQ significantly correlated with students’ overall evaluations as well as specific items regarding humanism, medical knowledge, and respectfulness. EQ showed no correlation with faculty members’ perceived teaching abilities (Table).

Conclusions: Surgeon EQ showed a strongly positive, statistically significant correlation with medical student evaluations. These data suggest that faculty development programs aimed at improving EQ may be valuable interventions for surgical faculty.