Emotional Intelligence Coaching Enhances Patient-Centered Care

Healthcare providers with high EI, have more successful performance, more important outcomes in the workplace and improved individual behaviors. The success of implementing EI skills requires staff commitment, the culture of communication, collaboration and adaptability.

Physician empathy improves patient satisfaction, adherence to treatment, fewer medical errors, and better management of chronic conditions. EI contributes to the physician-patient relationship, increased empathy, teamwork, communication, stress management, organizational commitment, and nurse career satisfaction, and effective leadership. There is a connection between EI and patient care and physician career success. 

EI helps physicians in changing self-devastating disruptive behavior and relieves personal-stress. It helps understand ones own feelings, and as well as the feelings of others. EI is a very powerful strategy to recognize, direct and positively express emotions, build strong relationships and change behavior. Being a good physician not only equips you with technical knowledge but also requires an understanding client's emotion.

Customer Service Is Key For Executive Coaching Success

 It is Sunday morning and I am at the Phoenix Air Port awaiting a flight to Huston to provide a two- day intensive coaching session for a busy surgeon. Coaching executives and busy clients requires the willingness to accommodate their unique needs.

The Anderson & Anderson, APC Emotional Intelligence Coaching for “disruptive behavior” and physician leadership consists of two phases. Phase 1 is a two-day, 12 hour intensive on-site or at our Brentwood/Los Angeles office. Phase 11 consists of 12 bi-monthly phone sessions over a six- month period.

In the 11 years that we have offered this program, we have learned that clients are willing to pay for quality services that are provided in a manner that caters to the needs of the client.

Coaching for “disruptive physicians” is skill focused Emotional Intelligence

In contrast to Psychotherapy, the major appeal of Executive Coaching rests on the perception that coaching is a powerful and highly effective approach to productivity and leadership excellence. It is a relatively brief and cost effective alternative to psychotherapy or training.

Coaching for “disruptive physicians” is still in its’ infancy having been established in response to the 2008 Alert by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Health Care Organizations. Disruptive behavior demonstrate problems in self-control, self-awareness, social awareness and relationship management as well as assertive communication and empathy.

Development- focused coaching is both a process and method for developing or enhancing technical, operational, analytic, relational, strategic, or self-management skills that occurs within a collaborative relationship with a coach. The goals are to reverse a skill deficit like communication anger management, empathy or stress management. For “disruptive physicians” skill focused coaching is the primary or only agenda.

Coaching begins with an Emotional Intelligence Assessment along with client workbooks, videos, ancillary coaching material and exercises as well as Post Tests.

Pre and Post EQ-i-2.0 Assessments Increase The Viability Of Emotional Intelligence Coaching

 Healthcare Organizations are less likely to seek executive or leadership coaching from coaches who do not use a demonstrated viable Pre and Post assessment along with client workbooks, videos and other ancillary coaching material.

“Evidence based coaching is based on social science evidence of how humans learn and develop over their life span, --intellectually, emotionally, socially, and in life as well as in organizational contexts”.

Recently, one physician leadership client enrolled 45 members of his physician leadership team in our Emotional Intelligence Coaching Program for Healthcare Professionals. His decision was based on his own personal experience as a client in our program.

Let’s share our successes as well as our challenges.

Corporate Coaching Clients VS Individual Clients

 It is far more time consuming and expensive to seek individual coaching clients who are employees of corporations. This is especially true of Healthcare Organizations, IT or Fortune Five Hundred Firms. On March 13,14, I will travel to San Francisco to provide on-site Emotional Intelligence Coaching to a surgeon whose Hospital Chain employs 10,000 physicians in Northern California and 6,500 in Southern California.

Executives and physicians who are mandated to seek Emotional Intelligence for “disruptive behavior” are rarely motivated to respond to marketing initiates by coaches. These physicians are more likely to follow the recommendations made by the organizations’ Human Resource Managers.

A relationship with one HR Department is worth more than a $100,000 investment in marketing or advertisements for executive coaching clients.