Emotional intelligence abilities of the physician executive.

摘要

Purpose. The purpose of this study was to determine the overall, area, and branch abilities of emotional intelligence for physician leaders. A secondary purpose was to determine if there were significant differences in emotional intelligence abilities for the overall, area, and branch scores between physician leaders and normed consensus samples of the Mayer--Salovey--Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT).;Findings. The study found that the physician leaders scored low to high average on the overall, area, and branch scores and scored lower than the normative group. The one-sample t-test indicated a statistically significant difference between the normative group and the sample on the overall emotional intelligence score and the managing emotions score, with the physician leaders scoring lower.;Conclusion. The following conclusions were made: physician leaders' emotional intelligence scores were in the low average range with two in the high average range; low average scores for the physician leaders indicate a need for emotional intelligence development; physicians scored lowest in the area of experiential emotional intelligence; and physician leaders scored highest in the branch score of understanding emotions. Future research should replicate this study to include a larger population of physician leaders and comparison groups of nursing and administrative leaders. This study found a gap in the emotional intelligence of physician leaders and recommended that education to improve leadership skills should be included in physician training, beginning in the academic portion of their medical education and continuing throughout their career.