Emotional Intelligence in Health Care Leadership

Mastering emotional intelligence (EI) has long been considered a key leadership skill in business and, more recently, in health care. EI is associated with many favorable outcomes in medicine, although its impact on hard clinical endpoints such as mortality or disease-specific outcomes remains unclear. Yet it is recognized as crucial because its absence has known negative effects on workplace culture, which is directly tied to better health care delivery. Fortunately, EI can be learned, and training is likely most successful when it is longitudinal and includes spaced repetition, structured reflective practice, mentorship, and debriefing.