What is Emotional Quotient (EQ)?

Emotional Quotient is defined as the ability to perceive, express, understand and regulate emotion. Emotionally intelligence people are self-aware. They manage their emotion without being hijacked by overwhelming stress, depression, anxiety, or anger. They can delay enjoyment in pursuit of long-range rewards, rather than being overtaking by immediate impulses. Their empathy enables them to read others’ emotions. They handle others’ emotion skillfully, knowing what to say to a grieving friend, how to courage colleagues, and how to manage conflicts well. Simply said, they are emotionally smart, and thus they often succeed in careers, marriages, and parenting where other academically smarter people fail. Golemen argued that Intelligence Quotient (IQ) only contributes about 20% to success in life, and other forces contribute to the rest. Emotional Intelligence is not necessarily related to academic ability. In extreme cases, brain damage may diminish emotional intelligence while leaving academic intelligence intact. There are considerable evidences showed that emotional intelligence is a determinant of success in a variety of occupational setting, with most of the studies focusing on leaders and those in sales occupations.

Realizing the important of EQ, future medical doctors should take some of their time to learn how to nurture and develop their EQ properly. With appropriate level of EQ they will be better and good doctors. If we fail to develop our EQ, actually we plan to ruin ourselves. Think about it and let us transforming ourselves into a sustainable tommorow.

Unexpected Findings!

In the middle of Jan 09, I did a survey on prevalence of stress among secondary school students (around 100 students) in an ordinary secondary school. The survey showed that the prevalence of stress among the students was around 27%. The prevalence is higher compared to the prevalence of normal population (less than 10%). It is nearly similar to the prevalence of stress among medical students which is around 30%. It was unexpected finding because i thought that the prevelance will be much lower, may be less than 15%. This simple survey suggested that even at the secondary school level our students already under high pressure. Let us think for a while about this, what will happen to them if they enter medical school? To verify this finding, we need to conduct a proper survey. However, some lessons to be learnt from this simple survey are teachers should be aware of this problem and early detection of stressed students should be done by the school teachers. Early detection and intervention will reduce negative and unwanted impacts of stress on the students.

PREVENTION is better than CURE