for emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence, or EI, means the ability to identify, assess,
and manage one’s own emotions and those of others. Viewing the
physician's role through a lens of emotional intelligence (EI)
illuminates the realities of a working relationship between patient
and provider. It reveals the entire spectrum of our thoughts and
feelings as healthcare becomes increasingly patient-centered. EI
offers ways for physicians to discover ways to work more effectively
within the emotional landscape of their patients, ultimately improving
the accuracy of understanding and generating increased satisfaction in
patient care.
Tooling software with an emotional intelligence
lens is a mountaintop opportunity for the patient experience and the
outcomes of the headwinds currently faced in healthcare. The
traditional care delivery model emphasizes efficiency and clinical
efficacy, which are critical in theory but do not always translate
well into the patient experience. EI-focused software design means
tooling that goes beyond the purely clinical to interact with the
patient’s emotional and psychological experience. You may be more
likely to achieve the desired outcomes of adherence or stickiness in
patients because they connect with the interface and feel heard, and
the care model feels more personal.
This article will discuss how
healthcare software can be designed to have emotional intelligence. It
will consider its key features and functions, the technical
difficulties of such an integration, and its effects on patient care
and experience. We will discuss further technical trends and provide
examples of its presence in existing technology. Using the ideas
presented, we hope to highlight the potential transformational role
that emotional intelligence can play in healthcare delivery.
Emotional intelligence (EI) consists of our ability to identify,
understand and manage our emotions and be competent at dealing with
others’ emotions. There are five parts: self-awareness,
self-regulation, empathy, social abilities, and motivation.
Self-awareness is about knowing your mood, and self-regulation is
about positively navigating that mood. Empathy is the ability to feel
a person’s emotions, and social skills are about cultivating and
sustaining relationships. Motivation means using emotions to
accomplish your personal and professional objectives. These are key
ingredients in healthcare that enable positive patient and caregiver
communication and facilitate an understanding of the needs of
patients.
The impact of emotional intelligence on
patient-provider engagement cannot be overstated. High EI allows
clinicians to build relationships, engage more easily, and listen more
empathically to patient questions. When doctors and nurses learn their
patients’ feelings, it creates a safe space for the communication and
engagement of the patient and subsequent treatment success. Also, high
EI helps create a more patient-centric culture, an important driver of
increased patient satisfaction. The more providers learn these
abilities, the more appreciated and well-understood patients will feel
– which means better health and improved healthcare.
Healthcare providers often face great obstacles when trying to
understand and address the emotional needs of their patients. For
example, the fast-paced nature of the clinical environment may not
allow providers to engage closely with patients from an emotional
standpoint. Similarly, there is a training disconnect: many healthcare
professionals are trained almost exclusively in clinician skills,
leaving them ill-prepared to address the emotional wickets of patient
care. Finally, patients may experience their treatment as disconnected
from their emotional and lived experience. This can make them feel
misunderstood, anxious, and less satisfied with care. As a result,
practitioners may not make meaningful connections with their patients,
making it harder for them to adhere to their treatment and improve
their health.
Emotional intelligence is vital in difficult
situations, like giving bad news or caring for patients with chronic
illnesses. When the news is terrible, as it often is in end-of-life
situations, how patients process the information is largely dependent
on the provider, who can provide an empathic connection and relay the
information in a compassionate and caring manner to lessen the
devastating impact of receiving bad news. Communication with patients
living with chronic illnesses is similarly challenging, and a
patient’s emotional and psychological needs go far beyond medical
diagnosis and interventions. Providers with high EI can impart
empathy, communicate more effectively, and encourage patients living
with chronic illness to address the psychological and emotional
effects of these experiences, leading to enhanced patient engagement
and quality of life.
Despite the obvious benefits of emotional
intelligence, there remains a significant gap between current
technology capabilities and the emotional support provided to patients
through healthcare software. Most software is designed around
efficiency, focusing on data management, scheduling, and managing
clinical workflows. They can be instrumental as a source of clinical
support in managing patients but will typically not foster attitudes
or habits of empathy and emotional engagement with patients. By
designing software that fills the very big gap between technical
capabilities and patient care, healthcare organizations can provide
more meaningful support to patients by retaining and enhancing the
positives of the human element of care.
To design empathetic healthcare software with the proper emotional
intelligence, the caretaker’s user interface (UI) should be visually
appealing, user-friendly, and capable of instilling a sense of warmth
or care for its users. For example, color choices used in the UI
design can elicit emotions and feelings. In contrast, friendly design
elements and clear, empathetic language can provide support, and
resonant emotional cues can allow for an empathetic understanding of
user states. A well-designed UI can create a platform for more humane,
engaging, and empathetic interactions between the patient and the
software. This feedback loop can make the patient feel closer, more
understood, and more validated. Properly prioritizing users’ emotional
states – that is, emphasizing empathic communication – in the UI
design process can make rooms more humane places to be.
Another
innovation could involve sentiment analysis – for example, using AI to
gauge emotions from messages typed into a textbox or communicated
through vocal cues right at the point of interaction. For example,
suppose an algorithm detects that a patient attending an online
consultation is feeling frustrated or anxious. In that case, it can
inform the provider about these emotions so they can adjust their
communication style. This ability improves patient-provider
interactions, and since emotions can affect treatment, it also
enhances healthcare quality overall.
Personalization is another
essential principle that can be applied to develop emotionally
intelligent software. Within each emotional situation, the same
actions or messages don’t always apply to all of us. For example, a
psychologically sophisticated AI assistant might ask us how we feel
and provide personalized health reminders or health education
materials based on our personality and past emotional states. It could
also suggest personally relevant resources, such as patient-to-patient
support groups or community services that align with the circumstances
of our lives. Finally, building emotional responsiveness into software
– especially emotionally intelligent software – requires feedback
loops so developers can improve their work. This might include
surveying our experiences with such an AI assistant to identify
features not working well for certain users or communities and provide
controlled experience opportunities to refine clinical responses. The
software can be enhanced, evolved, and improved as more inputs become
available. By incorporating these principles into the design of
healthcare applications, developers can embed emotional intelligence
into healthcare delivery, ensuring that tomorrow’s software can
interact with us as responsively as compassionate care providers can
today.
Many issues involve using emotional intelligence (EI) in medical
software, primarily due to inherent technical limitations and the
complexity of human emotions. Emotions are complex and contextualized,
so software can’t always interpret and adjust them in real-time. These
AI technologies are not yet ready to appreciate human emotional
expression and could miss or misunderstand patient care. Machine
learning algorithms that learn from patterns and data can’t have the
human touch and intuition clinicians apply to their patients'
encounters. That constraint calls for ongoing research and development
of systems that can recognise and accommodate the complex human
emotions better.
The other major obstacle is the separation of
human and technology in patient care. The emotionally intelligent
software can add something valuable to patient-provider relationships
but cannot supersede in-person interaction. Healthcare providers risk
becoming so plugged in to technology that their engagement with
patients becomes less transactional. Condophant care is rooted in
human interaction, and technology can and should be an enabler of but
not an alternative to human interactions. Getting it just right
involves careful consideration that brings emotional intelligence into
the software but does not undermine the power of physicians to connect
authentically with patients.
And, finally, deploying AI in
emotional evaluations poses ethical issues that we need to tread
carefully. When we adopt sentiment analysis and other emotions-based
diagnostics, we are often left with questions around privacy –
especially about how patient data is harvested, stored and utilized.
Patients may be uncomfortable about AI processes processing their
emotions, worrying that the data might be misused. Furthermore, there
are AI algorithms’ biases that may result in false assessments and
unjust treatment for different demographics. Solving these ethical
problems requires open data, strong privacy protections for patients,
and the dedication to creating equitable, impartial AI products that
improve, not undermine, patient care.
There are many possibilities for emotionally intelligent healthcare
software whose time is coming. More capable, emotionally intelligent
virtual assistants can help create more human interaction during
telehealth visits. Such assistants could be equipped to modulate their
emotional intelligence via natural language processing and affective
computing tools, including employing active listening techniques.
Integration with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) might
also offer an opportunity to create new, immersive environments where
people can interact with their health issues in more dynamic,
emotionally supportive situations.
Machine learning and AI will
be a big part of the evolution of humane responses within healthcare
software. As the technology improves, its insights will refine care to
new levels. The ability of AI systems to scour volumes of patient data
for emotional signatures and trends could proactively identify
patterns of distress or dissatisfaction, even when those patterns are
not self-evident. This capacity to identify emotionally vulnerable or
unhappy patients could prompt timely intervention to resolve issues
that reflect the individual’s unique needs. As the contextual
understanding of AI algorithms improves along with employment, the
responses of those systems could also improve in the moment.
Contextual data used to filter and refine responses from AI systems
will improve, too, as more data and feedback from human actors are fed
back into the algorithms.
Over the coming years and decades,
emotionally intelligent software will likely transform care delivery
toward more patient-centered, relationship-focused, humane approaches.
By matching providers to patients that fit their EI profiles, these
EI-powered systems can lead to new partnerships between patients and
clinicians, yielding better patient satisfaction and treatment
compliance. Emotionally intelligent software will also become a
standard component of a fuller suite of mental health and
wellness/care approaches. This will likely reduce care disparities as
more culturally responsive and individualized solutions become
available. Incorporating EI into our healthcare software estimates
will revolutionize care delivery based on its empathetic, validating,
patient-centered, and responsive nature to all users.
In short, it is not only possible but necessary to embed emotional intelligence in healthcare software to elevate the quality of care people receive everywhere and help facilitate meaningful connections between providers and their patients. As we continue to recognize the role emotions play in health and patient outcomes, emotionally intelligent software can help us close the widening gap between the heart and the technology that provides care in the world we see around us each day.