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© Proceedings of the Ruhuna Quality Assurance Sessions 2021 (RUQAS 2021)
st
21 September 2021

Keywords: Academic Performance, Emotional Intelligence, Impact, Health Science
Undergraduates, Systematic Review.

Introduction

Emotional intelligence (EI) which is also known as emotional quotient (EQ) is generally described
how a person deals with intrapersonal (own) and interpersonal (with others) emotions and maintains

such relationships. Mayer and Salovey defined EI as the ability to perceive emotions, to understand

emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions (Salovey and Mayer, 1990).
A model of EI has been described with four-branches namely perceiving, using, understanding, and

managing emotions (Salovey and Grewal, 2005).

Perceiving, using, understanding, and managing emotions (Salovey and Grewal, 2005) of own and

others are vital for health care professionals as they are dealing with human beings in an environment
with a multitude of stressors (Pau et al., 2007). Higher levels of EI have been shown to be associated

with lower levels of stress and effective functioning among health care professionals (Pau et al., 2007).

Since EI is a part of the character development, it cannot be developed soon after the individual

becomes a healthcare professional. It should be introduced from childhood and included in the
education programmes from primary to tertiary level education. Further, EI is a quality that should be

inculcated among health sciences undergraduates at least while they are receiving their foundation

education in the university. Health sciences undergraduates are supposed to learn a curriculum with a
wide subject content blend with both a theoretical component learnt in classrooms and a clinical

component practiced at the real patient environment within a stipulated time period. They undergo
training in a highly stressful environment with heavy workload and long hours of training.

Furthermore, they have to interact with different personnel including patients, families and different
categories of healthcare professionals (Singh et al., 2020). Further, they need to work under the

supervision of a group of clinical experts which makes them more stressful. Therefore, dealing with

emotions is an important attribute of health sciences undergraduates, especially those in medical,
dental and nursing streams, who are involved with direct patient management.

Many studies have shown that EI has a close association with academic success at schools and higher
education institutes including universities (Singh et al., 2020). Health sciences undergraduates’

evaluations include a theoretical component evaluated with the paper-based examinations and clinical
competency evaluated in a real patient environment. Therefore, it can be assumed that well performed

academic grades of these two components of health sciences undergraduates might also have a direct
relationship with EI.

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