Identifying the Level of Medical Students’ Emotional Intelligence to Determine the Need for Improvement of the Educational Process

The study is aimed at assessing the level of EI of medical students. We used the literature analysis’ method, the Lusin’s questionnaire, mathematical processing of research results, comparative analysis, synthesis and generalization. The study involved 324 students of SSMU named after V.I. Razumovsky: 242 women and 82 men. The average age of participants was 20 years. We found that the respondents generally have an average level of emotional intelligence development, which is sufficient to perform professional tasks. However, there is a disproportion in the scores on the emotion management scale, dominated by very low and low scores. With such indicators for students, the risk of emotional burnout increases. It was also revealed that students with higher grades had poorer control over expression. In addition, it was found that men have a better-developed skill of understanding and managing their own emotions, as well as control of expression, which we associate with the different hormonal background and existing gender attitudes in society about the rules for raising children. The novelty of this study lies in the selection and description of the optimal ways to improve the medical educational process, which are based on the discovered level of EI development among students. The obtained results can be used to adapt the existing medical education system to the tasks of forming medical workers with developed emotional intelligence.