Critical Thinking Skills and Their Relationship with Emotional Intelligence in Medical Students of Introductory Clinical Medicine (ICM) Course in Isfahan University of Medical Sciences

Introduction: Critical Thinking is one of the most important skills for people of 21th century, especially for medical students. Emotional intelligence is another outstanding factor for success in all aspects of life, profession and education. It seems that both critical thinking and emotional intelligence altogether can play an important role in training professional doctors. The aim of this study was to evaluate the critical thinking skills of medical students and their relationship with emotional intelligence score of them in the first semester of 2010-2011 school year. Methods: The target group was all the students of the term 6 of medicine (n=69) in the Isfahan Medical University.California Critical Thinking Skills Test-(CCTST) with 5 subscales and Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory- EQ-i with 5 scales and 15 subscales were used for data collection. Data were analyzed by SPSS11.5, using descriptive statistics, Pearson's correlation coeffitient, paired-samples T-test and independent-samples T-test. Results: Based on the findings, mean age of the target group was 22 years, and 72% of them were women. Mean score and standard deviation of Critical thinking test respectively were 11.96 out of 34 and 3.69. The mean score of deductive reasoning (6.12 out of 16) was significantly higher than inductive reasoning (4.92 out of 14). The total scores and standard deviation of Bar-On test were 330.7 (out of 450) and 34.29 respectively.There was no significant relationship between total score of Critical Thinking and Emotional Intelligence, except for the field of social responsibility of emotional intelligence that was directly related to Critical Thinking score (r=0.45, p=0.001). Conclusion: Although, mean score of critical thinking in medical students was not appropriate enough compared to the similar international studies, it was consistent with national ones. This can reflect the lack of critical thinking training in iranian educational curriculum. Lack of relationship between critical thinking and emotional intelligence scores might have been due to the difference in the type of questionnaires and students’ overestimation about their emotional abilities.