Association between Emotional Intelligence and Professionalism in Medical Students: The Compassion-Competence Nexus

In medical education, the challenging constructs of emotional intelligence and professionalism are increasingly being addressed worldwide and seem to share common characteristic components. The objective of this study was to determine the association between emotional intelligence and professionalism as perceived and self-reported by medical students and to explore the gender difference in these two variables.

It is a cross-sectional study of eight months duration, from February-September 2019, that included final year medical students at Dow Medical College through convenience sampling. The participants completed the self-reporting questionnaires of trait emotional intelligence and modified professionalism mini evaluation exercise. Pearson correlation coefficient was applied to determine the association between the emotional intelligence and professionalism scores. Independent T test was used to determine the gender difference for these two variables.

Emotional Intelligence and professionalism scores were found to be positively and significantly correlated with moderate strength of association (r =0.412). There was no significant difference of emotional intelligence and professionalism scores of males and females.

Increase in emotional intelligence is associated with the increase in professionalism among medical students.