Recommendations:
This study emphasizes the need for integration of EI training into medical education, especially in the clinical stage. (8) (21) Integration of cognition and emotion in medical studies is critical, and the learning of EI through training programs would promote outstanding medical care for the coming years. (9) Some have suggested incorporating community-oriented medical education (COME) into medical studies because it has been demonstrated an effective strategy to create socially conscious doctors worldwide. (5) Furthermore, students may need continuous emotional support and extracurricular activities each period to improve their EI, or at least prevent its deterioration. Studies have emphasized that increasing extracurricular activities would increase EI significantly (24); integration of medical students into organizational work would also increase EI. (35) Moreover, students’ hobbies should be supported and encouraged, as these activities are critical in providing students an outlet from the stressful medical environment, thereby helping to decrease the incidence of burnout and psychological disorders among medical students. (36)
As the difference between student knowledge of the signs and symptoms of diseases and the clinical presentation of patients may affect EI, we recommend the use of simulated patients during the beginning of clinical training as a transition into dealing with real patients. This may decrease that discordance and improve student EI. Similarly, because student regret at studying medicine negatively impacts EI, meetings should be held with pre-college and first-year students to explain to them the reality of medical education (both positive and negative aspects) and to emphasize that studying medicine should be their own decision; this would help the discipline. (5)
From the research standpoint, factors that affect EI remain unclear and further studies are needed to assess those factors. This study is precedent-setting in Palestine, but was applied to students of only two universities. Therefore, further studies should be started that involve all universities in Palestine with medical programs.