Relación entre Inteligencia Emocional y Empatía en Médicos Familiares

The doctor-patient relationship is essential to provide quality care, therefore, emotional intelligence (EI) and empathy are essential for good performance in daily consultation. Objective: To know if there is a relationship between emotional intelligence and empathy in family doctors. Methods: A cross-sectional, observational, descriptive and prolective study was carried out at the Family Medical Unit No. 9, in Tehuacán Puebla; family doctors were included, either permanent or trusted, of any age and gender, with any work experience, from all shifts, who responded to two evaluation tools: the TMMS-24 to evaluate emotional intelligence validated with a Cronbach's Alpha of 0.91 and the Jefferson Scale to measure empathy on a Likert-type scale with a Cronbach's Alpha of 0.94. Data analysis was performed with descriptive and inferential statistics with a non-parametric Sperman test, using the SPSS v 25 program. Results: Sample of physicians consisting of 41.4% (12) men and 58.6% (17) women aged between 32 and 55 years, with a mean of 42.7 years and standard deviation of 7.2. In the evaluation of emotional intelligence, the emotional attention dimension 58.6% presented adequate emotional attention, 37.9% had little attention and 3.4% showed too much attention, in emotional clarity: 44.8% of physicians showed excellent emotional clarity, 44.8% adequate clarity, and 10.3% need to improve, in emotional repair: 55.2% presented adequate emotional repair, 31% excellent repair, and 13.8% need to improve. Regarding the levels of empathy, 55.2% presented an intermediate level, 41.4% an outstanding level, and 3.4% a high level. The statistical analysis did not show significant correlations between both variables. Conclusions: In this study, it was found that family physicians at the UMF have adequate emotional intelligence and empathy at intermediate or outstanding levels, however, there is no significant relationship between them. It is worth highlighting the tendency of women to obtain better results in empathy.