Emotional Intelligence: Or Why Crying in the Toilet Might Actually Be CPD

David Wandless
Jul 4
3 min read

We teach medical students a lot of things: how to take bloods, how not to offend a consultant, how to drink enough coffee to survive but not so much you start crying before ward round. But one of the most undervalued, under-measured, and frankly misunderstood skills is emotional intelligence — or EI if you're trying to make it sound more academic in your ARCP.

Emotional intelligence is, depending on who you ask, either:

the holy grail of leadership and empathy, or
corporate buzzword bullshit designed to sell books with flow diagrams.

I reckon it’s somewhere in between. But here’s the thing: in medicine, especially in general practice, EI isn’t a luxury — it’s survival. Not just for the patient, but for you.

The Basics: What is EI (and what isn’t it)?

EI is often boiled down to five key domains:

Self-awareness – knowing when you're about to snap.
Self-regulation – not snapping.
Motivation – caring enough to try again tomorrow.
Empathy – seeing the world through the patient’s eyes (even when they’ve WebMD’d themselves into a frenzy).
Social skills – communicating without sounding like a robot or an overenthusiastic CBT leaflet.

It’s not being “nice.” It’s not pretending everything’s okay when it isn’t. And it’s definitely not smiling while someone tells you they think turmeric cured their lupus.

It’s about emotional self-efficacy and being able to reflect in real time — even under pressure.

Why GPs Need It More Than Most

In hospital jobs, you can sometimes hide behind machines, corridors, and teams. In general practice? You're on stage. Solo. Lights up. No intermission.

In eight minutes, you can go from bereavement to baby rash to a bloke asking if it’s weird that his toe smells like curry. You have to emotionally pivot — fast, and often.

And when you're not emotionally intelligent? You feel it:

You snap at a receptionist.
You dread certain patient names on your list.
You stop caring and don’t even notice.

Emotional intelligence has been shown to directly impact burnout in primary care and the ability to maintain compassionate care through the fog of fatigue.

Emotional Intelligence in Teaching

We bang on about professionalism and communication skills, but often miss EI entirely. Or worse, we bundle it under the fuzzy heading of “resilience” and tell students to go to a mindfulness session they don't have time for.

But EI can be taught — or at least developed. And here’s the kicker: your role as educator or mentor is often the only place a student might feel safe enough to screw up emotionally and reflect on it.

Teaching EI isn’t about PowerPoints with bullet points from Goleman. It’s about:

Holding space for mess.
Letting students process discomfort.
Modelling boundaries and vulnerability.

The Emotional Cost of EI

Here's the dirty secret: being emotionally intelligent in medicine often means feeling everything more, not less. And sometimes that hurts.

You absorb emotions. You carry stories home. You lie awake because someone’s unspoken distress lodged in your chest hours later.

But the alternative? Numbness. Burnout. Disconnection. Defensive practice. And more complaints.

So What Do We Do?

If you're a medic — especially a GP or educator — you need to:

Value EI as a core skill, not a bonus.
Create spaces for reflection, that aren’t just “tell us about a time you were sad.”
Protect your own empathy — with supervision, support, rest, and sometimes earplugs and a bit of gallows humour.

And if you’re teaching or assessing it: please, for the love of all that’s holy, stop grading empathy like it’s a tick-box on a safety checklist.