MSSP587: THE EFFECT OF DEMOGRAPHICS ON EQ IN MILITARY MEDICAL STUDENTS
Mackenzie Berry, OMSII, Jacob Doyle, OMSII, Sun Jin Oh, OMSII, Amanda Sniadach, OMSII, Raul Betancourt-Perez, OMSIII, Isain Zapata, PhD, Anthony LaPorta, MD, Larry Brunson; Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine
Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess the differences in emotional quotient by measuring different demographics in medical students.
Methods:103 students (78 male, 25 female; 85 Caucasian, 11 Asian, 6 Mixed; 66 single, 37 married) attending Rocky Vista University from three sessions (2017, N=30; 2018, N=32; 2019, N=41). All student participants were contracted with the U.S. military. Students were put in a hyper-realistic mass-trauma simulation to induce stress and the data was collected using the Veracity TouchScreener® tablet, which can record significant psychophysiological responses. All the responses were pooled across 2017, 2018, and 2019. Contingency tables were analyzed for Marital status, Gender and Race using a Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel test for Nonzero Correlation.
Results: Emotional quotient data was not found to be significantly different among the demographics tested across the years.
Conclusion: This may indicate that medical students have similar emotional quotients regardless of race, gender, and marital status. Although our study cannot disprove the existence of the effect, it suggests it is small. In future studies we would like to compare emotional quotient data across different professions such as physician assistants, nurses, first responders and social workers.