How emotional intelligence turns medical challenges into opportunities [PODCAST]

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Join us for an insightful conversation with Ben Reinking, a board-certified pediatric cardiologist, medical educator, and certified physician development coach, as we explore the profound impact of emotional intelligence in health care. Ben shares a pivotal moment that turned a potential setback into a heartwarming memory and offers strategies for developing emotional intelligence to improve patient care, strengthen team dynamics, and enhance personal growth in the medical field.

Ben Reinking is a board-certified pediatric cardiologist, medical educator, and certified physician development coach, as well as the owner of The Developing Doctor. He can also be reached on Instagram.

He discusses the KevinMD article, “The power of emotional intelligence: a personal story and lessons for physicians.”

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Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast. Today we welcome back Ben Reinking. He is a pediatric cardiologist, medical educator, and certified physician development coach. Today’s KevinMD article is “The power of emotional intelligence: a personal story and lessons for physicians.” Ben, welcome back to the show.

Ben Reinking: Thanks, Kevin. Always great to be here.

Kevin Pho: All right, so today let’s jump right into your article about emotional intelligence. What’s this one about?

Ben Reinking: You know, this one’s about a specific patient encounter where just a little minor miscommunication with the family, or a math error, results in an opportunity, one, for a student to intervene and have a chance to speak up, and then our conversation with the family and the events that unfolded just really were an episode, or an event, that just stuck with me. It’s been several years since it happened, and I think reflecting on why it was so important to me and why it stuck with me, it’s just a great example of how relating to other people and responding to their emotions appropriately can just enhance inter-team dynamics and patient care.

Kevin Pho: All right, so tell us a story for those who didn’t read your article.

Ben Reinking: Yeah, so I had been on inpatient service, and I was caring for a patient who was born with a medical problem, and he was several years into his course. So he and his family had been through the medical system, and anyone who’s been in the medical system for a long time is really informed about their care. This family was really involved and were great advocates for their child, but he had been in the hospital for a really long period of time. So we were working on just a nutrition plan and, not to, get him the nutrition that he needed. I think we calculated his fluids and nutrition goals, and I was like 5 ccs per kilo off on the calculation.

As I walked out of the room after a long conversation and sort of shared decision-making with the family, the student gently tapped me in there and said, “Hey, Ben, hey, Dr. Reinking, I think you made a calculation error.” She was appropriately astute to notice that sometimes just those little differences in care plans can really trigger families and upset them. So she was right. I made a minor calculation error, and immediately my stomach dropped, because I just dreaded walking back in the room after a long conversation, and the family had invested a lot in that.

But we walked back in the room, and I just said, “Hey, you know, I made a math error. I’m sorry.” To my surprise, that little admission really set off a memorable moment where the family just started laughing and gave me a hard time about not being able to do math. It’s something that still now, almost a decade later, they bring up every time I see them: “Hey, it’s the doctor who can’t do math.” It turned into a chance just to connect with them, and it turned into a really positive experience.

Kevin Pho: So, reflecting on your story, what immediate thoughts cross your mind when that student pointed out your math error? And tell us, how did you use emotional intelligence to navigate that moment?

Ben Reinking: Yeah, great question. You know, I think my first thought was just, “Dang it.” Nobody wants to make an error, no matter how minor it is. So I think I had a little bit of guilt and frustration and, honestly, a little bit of anxiety about just having to admit the error and go back in and talk to the family. At the same time, I was really thankful that the student said, “Hey,” and just pointed it out, because it took something that could have turned into a big deal and helped turn it into something that was memorable.

Kevin Pho: Yeah. And then when you talk about emotional intelligence, what does that mean to you?

Ben Reinking: You know, I think the core of emotional intelligence is to really just recognize what you’re feeling. So in that moment, it was really helpful for me to recognize, one, that I was frustrated with myself and anxious. If I would have brought those feelings into the room with the family, I think it would have turned out very differently. You know, if I would have brought frustration in at myself, it could have been perceived as frustration with the family, which would have been very different. So the core is really recognizing what you’re feeling and then being able to sort of control those emotions a little bit and respond to them appropriately.

Kevin Pho: So admitting a mistake, especially in front of a patient and their family, is never easy. Do you feel that eventually strengthened the bond that you had with that patient family?

Ben Reinking: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I think one of the most powerful things that we can say as physicians is sometimes either, “I don’t know, but let’s figure it out together,” or, “Hey, I could be wrong,” or, “I am wrong. Let’s pivot and try something else.” That’s one of the things that I think I’ve learned throughout my career: Just the ability to use that shared decision-making and make medicine a little bit more human just improves the experience for everybody.

Kevin Pho: So we talk about admitting mistakes. We talk about vulnerability. What are other examples of emotional intelligence that physicians and other health professionals can display during what are sometimes very stressful situations in the hospital or in the clinic?

Ben Reinking: Yeah, you know, we’re taught how to respond to the emotions of our patients and how to develop the strong physician-patient relationship, but it’s not often that we learn how to respond to the emotions of our peers. As you mentioned, working in hospitals is really stressful, and we are appropriately stressed and have a huge range of emotions in the workplace. So I think another core part of emotional intelligence is recognizing the emotions of others, and it’s really important to extend that to the people that you work with, whether it’s other physicians or nurses or anyone from the front-desk worker to people working directly on your team, because we all need to have a place to express and have our emotions safely. Sometimes we also need someone to help us reel it in when things aren’t going well. So I think that’s a really core part of leading a medical team as a physician.

Kevin Pho: And how about medical institutions themselves? Do they have a responsibility to foster the emotional intelligence of the medical staff, and if so, how can they do that?

Ben Reinking: Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, I do think they have a responsibility to sort of, maybe to frame it a little differently, to help allow us to work together as a team. One of the ways that we can work together as a team is just learning to relate to each other and to get through those difficult times. Nothing ever goes perfectly in life or in medicine, and we need to have the skill sets we need to navigate those challenging situations.

Kevin Pho: Yeah. So you’re a physician coach. When physicians talk to you and you want to coach emotional intelligence, or you want to address that, take us into one of those coaching sessions that you would have. How would you get that physician to develop that part of them?

Ben Reinking: You know, the first step is really just helping people identify what they’re feeling. We are taught, or maybe indirectly sometimes taught, that we need to put our emotions aside in the middle of patient care, and for those of us who have been doing it for a long time, I think that doesn’t work very well. You can put them aside maybe for a short period of time, and then they creep up in other places. So the first thing is just to name what you’re feeling. That’s usually the first thing I ask people to do: Just throughout the day, when you notice a thought or a feeling cross your mind, rather than discarding it, just try to name it throughout the day, and do that for a couple weeks, and it’s surprising how much benefit that has.

I know when I first started that process, my emotional repertoire, so to speak, was pretty limited. You know, I was happy, mad, sad, and that was about all that I could name. As I practiced doing that, I recognized that sometimes when I thought I was mad, really I was anxious, or sometimes I was just tired, or sometimes I was frustrated. So it’s just noticing those nuances that really helps people to navigate the health care system better.

Kevin Pho: And do you feel that’s difficult for some physicians to do, or not just some physicians, a majority of physicians to do? Because during medical training, a lot of that emotional IQ, that emotional intelligence, is stamped out of them during the course of the medical journey.

Ben Reinking: Yeah, it’s really hard. I mean, it’s hard to undo that programming. We spend so long learning how to work in the health care system, and it turns out how we’re taught to work, I think, isn’t sustainable, and it’s hard to undo that programming. Yeah, it takes time and practice.

Kevin Pho: Give us a sense of how long that takes in your experience talking to some of your clients.

Ben Reinking: If I’m being honest, I think it’s a lifelong journey, to be quite honest. So probably over a period of months, you can develop that skill set where you can recognize your own emotions. But then the challenge is, “All right, this is what I’m feeling now. How do I deal with that? And then how do I appropriately respond to what the people around me are feeling?” It’s just a lifelong learning process, which, honestly, is one of the great things. I think it’s what keeps medicine and health care interesting, and it’s one of the great things about coaching: You can watch people grow and learn new skills, and it sort of changes your perspective a little bit.

Kevin Pho: So I want to go back to that story that you told. For those younger physicians, residents, and medical students who may be listening to you now, talk about the impact that had on you. It’s a pretty powerful teaching moment, right? In terms of the impact it had on the family, the impact that it had on the relationship you had with the patient, and of course the impact that it had on the student who pointed out that error. So just reinforce again, in terms of this whole story, how you use that as a teaching moment and how that has changed you as a physician.

Ben Reinking: Yeah, you know, I think one of the most important parts of the story, actually, which I didn’t touch on, is just the student’s ability to just speak up and say, “Hey, you know, I think that maybe you made an error.” What I appreciated about it is that she did it in a really self-deprecating way. You know, she just gently tapped me on there and said, “Hey, I’m not sure if I’m doing this right, but I don’t think the math was right.” So always having the ability to just speak up and feel like what you say matters is important, and that’s a skill in and of itself. But as people in the teaching position or the attending position, giving people the space to do that and allowing them to speak up is really important, too. So for me, from a team perspective, those are really the two most important moments of the story.

Kevin Pho: Yeah, and it’s a credit to you that the student had the confidence and the space to point out your error, and I think fostering that environment is tremendously important. So as attending physicians, what are some of the things that you do that allow medical students, interns, and residents to speak up whenever they see something that is inaccurate, despite where they are on the traditional medical hierarchy?

Ben Reinking: You know, one thing that I try to do: I end every patient encounter when there’s a student or resident in the room. Usually I’ll end the encounter, and then I usually turn to the resident or student or whoever I’m working with: “Hey, did I forget anything, or is there anything else that you want to add?” So giving them the opportunity to speak up in front of the family, I think, is really powerful, because it places them in a position of authority, sort of, from the family’s perspective, but then it also gives them the floor. That just creates a culture, I think, where they can speak up in other places as well.

Kevin Pho: Absolutely. The empowerment, even some stakes, I think is tremendously helpful from an educational standpoint and a confidence standpoint as well. We’re talking to Ben Reinking. He is a pediatric cardiologist, medical educator, and certified physician development coach. Today’s KevinMD article is “The power of emotional intelligence: a personal story and lessons for physicians.” Ben, as always, let’s end with some take-home messages that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience.

Ben Reinking: Yeah, I think I’ll just go back to that coaching exercise I talked about before. If you want to learn a little bit more about emotional intelligence, just spend the next couple days trying to name what it is you’re feeling throughout the day, and I think you’ll be surprised by how much you gain from it.

Kevin Pho: Ben, as always, thank you so much for sharing your perspective and insight. Thanks again for coming back on the show.

Ben Reinking: Yeah, thanks.

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