Painting by : Dr. Anita Mariet Thomas (ENT), Baptist Hospital, Bangalore
Volume 11 Issues 8 August, 2021
Editorials
“Emotion can be the enemy, if you give into your emotion, you lose yourself. You must be at one with your emotions, because the body always follows the mind.”- Bruce Lee
Emotions as we know and understand are one of the basic characteristics of life propelling the dynamic nature of existence. Starting from a simple unicellular organism to complex living forms, the level and application of emotions vary according to their cognitive ability. Paul Ekman’s facial expression research describes six basic emotions “anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise and happiness”. But various psychological theories suggest that human emotions can be innumerable due to the unique ability of communicating their feelings through verbal and body language. Emotions play a vital part in all spheres of life. A person’s success or failure is often determined by how well he has mastered the control over his own emotions in different situations. This understanding has led to the concept called “Emotional intelligence” in which an individual has the ability to recognize not only his own emotions but also of others and use it successfully to adapt to environments.
In this context, people involved in Health care and medical profession are expected to possess high levels of emotional intelligence when it comes to clinical practice. The daily life of a Health care worker starts with listening to various physical and emotional problems of people. Situations quite often turn emotional when a patient’s health deteriorates due to complications, emergencies, and sudden deaths. Handling these difficult situations could be emotionally challenging both to the physician as well as to the family members of the concerned patient. Hence it becomes very vital to communicate and reciprocate our emotions appropriately while handling such practically tough situations. This makes more sense when we can understand and feel the seriousness of cases of violence against doctors and health care workers rising in recent times. Quite often the situation may have turned worse due to improper handling of turbulent emotions. Introspection of these incidents could help us to consider how to rectify this emotional spill over on both sides and adopt preventive measures accordingly. One significant way to bring down the emotional conflict would be to have a proper understanding of the evolving situation, a quick analysis of our own emotional state and of the person in front and adopt an effective communication strategy to reduce the possibility of the situation going out of control.
As far as our patients are concerned, they come to us with huge expectations. But unfortunately, they fail to understand at times that a doctor is also a human being and subject to emotional lability. People tend to be still ignorant about the emotional burnout of health care workers even in a state of pandemic such as Covid 19 which has overburdened the existing manpower and infrastructure. Above all misconceptions about the medical profession continue to be a big hurdle in a good doctor patient relationship.
Stressing the importance of developing a good interpersonal relationship, the recent competency based medical education has introduced the concepts of attitude, ethics and communication in undergraduate curriculum. It is imperative that the students realize the necessity of developing emotional maturity as they progress in their demanding career. Self-organization, regular physical activities, maintaining a good daily routine, adopting productive coping strategies and relaxation techniques are few simple stress management ideas to achieve an emotionally stable state of mind. An academically sound medical graduate may not be a successful practitioner as long he has a good understanding of his patients. Striking a good balance between sympathy and empathy according to the circumstances will help to establish a good clinical practice.
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