Emotional intelligence: It’s everywhere!

By: April Burke, PA-C, Chief Advanced Practice Officer

Each year, around Physician Assistant (PA) Week, I take time to reflect on the amazing journey I’ve had as a PA over the past 17 years. This year, an experience from early in my career filled my mind: a time when, as a new clinician, I had a conversation with a pharmaceutical sales representative that ended up teaching me a lot about myself and the way I practice medicine.

When I first started practicing as a hospital medicine PA, finding pharmaceutical sales reps on hospital floors was common. They would discuss their products with doctors and APPs to make sales. (While this was standard practice at the time, the tactic has since stopped.) One day, a rep I spoke with often was on the unit as I was rounding on my patients. After I’d gone in and out of a couple of patient rooms, he stopped me and said, “I think it’s amazing how you can change your approach to talking to patients as you enter each room.”

At the time, I simply said thank you and moved on to my next patient. Later, however, as I reflected on the compliment, I realized it was something I’d done but never really noticed or thought about.

Within seconds of entering a patient’s room, I could tell how that person was doing and would tailor my initial greeting appropriately. Whether opening with a joke or providing immediate reassurance, I always tried to meet the patient where they were. After that realization, I felt honored that he picked up on my adaptability from observing me from the hallway. It wasn’t until years later that I learned the skill I was unconsciously practicing was emotional intelligence (EQ).

As clinicians, we have conversations with patients and their family members that can elicit emotional responses. It is our duty to tune in to those responses, regardless of whether they’re positive or negative. In those moments, it’s so important to regulate our own emotions, recognize our patients’ responses, and provide them and their families with the comfort they need.

Sometimes, we join in the celebration of exciting news, sometimes we remain calm to diffuse a heated situation, and sometimes we cry along with them. We may even lean on the shoulder of a trusted colleague after leaving the room and having time to process ourselves. How we respond in those moments has a lasting impact on our patients and shapes how we approach conversations in the future.

Emotional intelligence plays a role, to some degree, in every interaction we have day-to-day. As a colleague, family member, friend, or even as a customer at the store, we engage in conversations that have the potential to elicit emotional responses. Some moments require a high EQ to navigate, while others seem more like routine conversations. Regardless of the kind of moment you find yourself in, remember that you may not fully know what’s going on in the other person’s life or what fuels their response. How you respond may have more of an impact than you know.