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Emotional Intelligence in Physician Assistant Students: A Descriptive Study Holly Dudash, MS, PA-C, Mary Guay, MS, PA-C, & Raymond Eifel, MS, PA-C Shenandoah University  Division of Physician Assistant Studies  Winchester, Virginia BACKGROUND CONCLUSION Figure 2: EI Pearson Correlation Scores Figure 1: SU PA Demographics Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use the information to guide one’s thinking and action.1,2 The use of the EI concept for teaching and measuring interpersonal skills and leadership abilities has been popular in the business sector for the past decade and its usefulness is growing within health care management.3,4,5 Over the past decade, emotional intelligence has been studied in medical practices, in the medical school application process, and within the medical school curricula to assess its role in the medical profession.6 Medical school residency programs have 6 core competencies that are required by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.7 These same 6 core competencies are identified by the American Academy of Physician Assistants for all physician assistants to acquire and maintain throughout their career.8 These competencies include patient care, medical knowledge, practice-based learning and improvement, interpersonal and communication skills, professionalism and system-based practice. The ability to learn and demonstrate these skills rely on the assumption that people are able to accurately manage their own and other’s emotions; a key component to emotional intelligence.7,10Emotional intelligence has the potential to help programs choose quality candidates as well as help build the skills necessary to meet requirements of the competencies set for the by the AAPA and the standards by ARC-PA in PA curricula. This study found that several components of EI are evaluated throughout the SU PA admissions process. There was no significant evidence found to determine if an objective measure of EI, the TEIQue survey, is better than a subjective measure of EI in the interview process. This study is unable to determine if EI is a skill set that matriculating students should already possess or if it is something that should be incorporated into the curricula to help students learn and improve upon during their education. Further studies would be needed to determine if emotional intelligence is something needed for admission, or integrated into the curricula. The possibility to have profound impact on the admissions process, as well as, an individual’s success within the profession can help provide programs with guidance in their selection process of quality candidates; a task that is growing more and more difficult as the number of applicants rises each year. The potential influence of EI as a positive predictor of success within the PA profession warrants further research. Figure 3: Normative Trait EI Scores REFERENCES Salovey P, Mayer J. Emotional Intelligence. ImagCogn Pers. 1990;9:185-211. Mayer J, Salovey P. What is emotional intelligence? In Salovey P, Sluyter D, Eds. Emotional Development and Emotional Intelligence: Implications for Educators. New York, NY: Basic Books; 1997:3-31. Elam CL. Use of “Emotional Intelligence” as one measure of medical school applicants’ noncognitive characteristics. Acad Med. 2000;75:445-446. Goleman D. What makes a leader? Harv Bus Rev. 1995;76:93-102. Freshman B, Rubino L. Emotional Intelligence: a core competency for health care administrators. Health Care Manag (Frederick). 2002;20:1-9. Jensen AR, Wright AS, Lance AR, et al. The emotional intelligence of surgical residents: a descriptive study. The American Journal of Surgery. 2008;195:5-10. Grewel D, Davidson HA. Emotional intelligence and graduate medical education. JAMA. 2008;300(10):1200-1202. American Academy of Physician Assistant. The competencies page. Available at: www.aapa.org/gandp/competencies.htm. Accessed May 6, 2008. Hughes P. Can we improve on how we select medical students? J R Soc Med. 2002;95:18-22. Epstein RM, Hundert EM. Defining and assessing professional competence. JAMA. 2002;287(2):222-235. Figure 4: SU PA Trait EI Scores OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study is to assess accepted measures of emotional intelligence in physician assistant students matriculating in an education program. This study will help determine if one method of evaluation is better than the other, or if a combination of both is best in evaluating non-cognitive characteristics in the applicants. This study will also take into consideration gender, age, health care experience, GRE scores, and undergraduate GPA to see if there is any correlation with EI. The hypothesis of this study is that a combination of both tools will best evaluate the applicant’s emotional intelligence and provide a better screening method when accepting applicants. EI has been shown to be an important characteristic to predict success in the academic setting as well as a predictor of success in the medical profession6,9,10 and therefore, it is important to see if it can be successfully applied to the physician assistant profession. RESULTS • Figure 1: All of the program entrance criteria were collected and calculated for the matriculating class of 2010 at Shenandoah University Physician Assistant Program (SUPA) that participated in the EI survey. The class consists of 39 new students, 30 females and 9 males and the ages range from 22 to 47 years of age with the average age being 24.82. Healthcare experience of the population shows 82% of the class to have up to 1 year of healthcare experience, 15% has up to 2 years and only 3% has 2 or more years of experience. The majority of the class, 56%, has a GPA ranging from 3.0 to 3.5; while 44% of the class has greater than 3.5. • Figure 2: All trait EI scores were compared to program entrance criteria GRE, GPA, healthcare experience, and interview score. The positive correlations found involved the interview and healthcare experience score. The correlations found were moderate correlations. One negative correlation was found involving experience score versus subscale emotion regulation (-0.360). • Figure 3: The SUPA class of 2010 Trait EI scores were compared to normative mean values. The normative values are based on 1721 individual’s scores with a mean age of 29.65. Of the population 30.8% has a high school degree, 29.5% has an undergraduate degree, 18.9% has a graduate degree, and 20.8% has less than a high school or other degree. Each subfacet, factor and Global trait EI score was higher for the SUPA class of 2010 versus the normative values. • Figure 4: Each factor and subscale of EI has a score calculated from the TEIQue survey. The scores range from 1 to 7; 1 is the minimum score, 7 the maximum score and 3.5 is the theoretical average on a Likert scale. The class average for all factors and subfacets score above the average from the normative data. The global EI trait for the class is 5.13. Out of the fifteen subfacets, happiness scored the highest with 6.11 and adaptability scored the lowest with 4.32. The four factors that define EI are as follows: well being factor scored the highest with 5.70, followed by emotionality (5.44), then sociability (4.86) and finally self control with a score of 4.73. METHODS Following Shenandoah University (SU) IRB approval, 39 matriculating PA students were given The Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue). The TEIQue is a 153 question self report survey to be taken in 25 minutes and answered on a Likert scale of 1-7, where 1 equals disagree completely and 7 equals agree completely. The scores were entered into a SPSS 16.0 template and sent to University College London for EI calculation. The Global EI score, 4 factors, and 15 subfacets of Emotional Intelligence were calculated for each individual. The calculated EI scores were compared to SU PA admission scores by the Pearson Correlation Coefficient. The EI scores were also compared to age by one way ANOVA and gender by t-test and finally to normative EI scores of the TEIQue. AAPA, San Diego, 2009