Bnai Zion Medical Center is reputedly the first in the world to teach its employees how to boost their emotional intelligence.
This article was published in the Jerusalem Post on April 22, 2017.
Medical professionals tend to be a conservative lot who only change their routines when (if at all) the need to do so is tangible and incontrovertibly proven. Yet Dr.
Amnon Rofe, the director-general of Haifa’s Bnai Zion Medical Center, nevertheless agreed to be a pathfinder three years ago and approved the launching of courses in “emotional intelligence” (EI or EQ) for staffers.
The program has proceeded from one department to another, with doctors, nurses and auxiliary workers included. Not only do they get along better as a result, but their rapport with patients and families is better, and verbal and physical violence is down. Researchers will soon publish studies in medical journals on the project; the state-owned hospital is the first in the world to adopt EI in its departments on a systematic basis.
“The program has changed a lot of things for the better,” Rofe, a gynecologist by training, told The Jerusalem Post in a recent interview.
“It has changed the atmosphere and improved interpersonal relations among workers and with the patients. Our staff received new tools to cope with stressful situations and contain violent blowups in the hospital.
The working climate here has improved significantly.”
The EI courses have already been conducted in the pediatrics and anesthesiology departments, and have just begun in the emergency department, which is prone to stress and tension, as well as in obstetrics and surgery.