Extraordinary Doctor: How Emotional Intelligence Drives a Physician’s Success by Viktoria Skaper

Extraordinary Doctor: How Emotional Intelligence Drives a Physician’s Success

Discover the essential people skills you didn’t learn in medical school. As a physician, you’ve devoted years of your life to training. From classrooms and textbooks to residency and beyond, you’ve honed your clinical expertise and technical abilities. But these skill sets are only half of the equation to achieving excellence. What is the other half? Emotional intelligence. In Extraordinary Doctor, top neurosurgeon Nimesh H. Patel explores the importance of emotional intelligence in physicians and how it is pivotal to succeeding in the field. Drawing on his decades of experience along with extensive conversations with colleagues and other professionals, Dr. Patel takes you beyond medical school and into the real world of medicine—where pleasant bedside manner can only get you so far, and dynamic human connections are critical in every situation. By focusing on communication skills, self-awareness, and empathy, Dr. Patel brings an understanding to the fundamental skills every doctor needs to build relationships, earn trust, and connect positively with patients, families, coworkers, and administration. With his incisive insights, Dr. Patel will convince you why your people skills need to be as scalpel-sharp as your clinical ones. And when you apply his teachings, you’ll upskill from an MD to an extraordinary doctor.

Reviews

Patel, an executive medical director and section chief of neurosurgery, offers an illuminating guide for doctors and medical professionals about the importance of emotional intelligence in their work, from the “crucial skill” of empathy, thoughtful communication to build trust and alliances, and much urgent, humane advice that goes beyond medical school studies, like “The mark of an extraordinary doctor is not how well you manage patients when outcomes are favorable; it is how you manage them when outcomes are not favorable.” Patel takes readers on an intimate journey through what he’s discovered in 15 years in the medical field, with a welcome emphasis on what it takes for doctors to “live up to the special status conferred” upon them by society. He thoughtfully considers the challenges of the work, and acknowledges that it’s hard to admit mistakes—but also that doing so makes it easier to cope with and learn from them.

Throughout Patel demonstrates acute understanding of doctors’ mindsets: “You know you’re superhuman,” he writes with a wink, “but patients appreciate it when you humanize yourself with a little humor and a smile in your voice.” Cooperation, empathy, active listening, and connections are some of the operative words as Patel offers detailed examples of his and his colleague's experiences, both positive and negative, showing the harsh reality of crazy hours, challenging emotions, high-level surgery, and patient care, with a little joke here and there and much clear-eyed guidance about how “the emo- tionally intelligent physician understands that managing chaos doesn’t mean you act chaotically.”

Patel’s advice and anecdotes read like intimate talk from a caring mentor urging for a new level of bedside manner. He’s not just pushing for niceness—this is about listening to the patient, putting aside the ego, and creating solutions. Patel’s encouraging call for self-awareness and improvement is specific to the medical world but readers from any field will find this rousing.

Takeaway: Rousing call for self-awareness and emotional intelligence in medical careers.

Comparable Titles: Michael Stein’s Accidental Kindness, Shareef Mahdavi’s Beyond Bedside Manner.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A

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