Opinion: Social skills and leadership in healthcare—The case for boosting doctors' EQ

How emotionally intelligent is your doctor? Although answers to this question vary, it is not surprising that physicians' social skills or "EQ" are related to their job performance. After all, regardless of doctors' technical competence, their ability to deal with patients and influence their behavior will depend more on their personality and attitude than what they learned in medical school. But as James Stoller, the Institute Chair for Education at Cleveland Clinic, argued, doctors have not been traditionally selected on their social skills. In fact, given that medical training mostly rewards individual competitiveness and academic knowledge, most doctors are ill-equipped to cater to the human side of patient demands.