Emotional Intelligence and Clinician Empathy: An Interdisciplinary Model for Understanding and Addressing Clinician Disruptive Behavior

Little attention has been given to the importance of clinician empathy and disruptive behavior in healthcare literature. Yet, disruptive behaviors in health care settings is a significant problem that can have negative implications for clinicians, patients, and families. Such misconduct in health care, in the health care field, can have adverse effect on staff interactions that can negatively impact staff satisfaction, staff performance, and patient outcomes of care. Arguably, individuals who lack empathy cause the most disruption. The literature of emotional intelligence gives us the most hope in terms of understanding the importance of empathy as a tool for managing disruptive behaviors in patient care settings. Within the Emotional Intelligence framework, empathy is an element of defense against disruptive behaviors in professional settings. In the field of social work, empathy is a skill that advances clinician capacity to maintain dignity and self-worth in the care that they provide. Therefore, the objective of this article is threefold: (1) to examine the meaning of empathy, which is defined according to the emotional intelligence framework, (2) to identify the potential significance of empathy in reducing clinician disruptive behavior (CDB)and (3) raise awareness about the capacity of social work professionals on interdisciplinary teams to advance the use emotional intelligence to increase empathy and lead with compassion in the interest of promoting quality patient care.