Students of Medicine of CEU Cardenal Herrera develop emotional skills through the project for academic innovation “Vibrant Pharmacology, a lifelong for life learning”. Sponsored by the teachers of the Degree in Medicine of CEU UCH Raquel Carcelén and Mª Dolores Guerrero, it is based on the assumption that emotional skills are a very relevant factor for professional and personal success.

Students, formed by group of future health professionals at the service of patients, has discovered through dynamics, clinical sessions, videos and other contents, the most frequent emotional responses to several situations. It has also reflected on the impact on others of what we do as well as on the importance of managing emotions correctly to feel good.

Emotional intelligence for a better patient care

Students have taken part in sessions with real patients analysing the relationship between medication and health problems. After they have presented a study on the need, effectiveness and safety of drugs along with a proposal for customized intervention for each case. Therefore they have been able to establish a parallelism between pharmacologic contents and emotional tools. In the words of teacher Mª Dolores Guerrero, the project “in addition to easing the understanding of contents of the topic Pharmacology, it has allowed students to acquire emotional skills crucial to work and relate with patients and other health professionals”.

Pharmacology is a complex topic so the clinical session has been very useful for students to study the medication received by each patient as well as potential interactions and side effects. According to the student of the 3^rd year of Medicine at CEU UCH, Celia Ruiz de Albornoz, “It is a highly enriching proposal. It offers an approach to the real patients, communicating with them, knowing their clinical history and having the possibility to give some ideas for improvement”.

Also one of the patients taking part has valued very positively the project: “it is very interesting to receive so much attention, sometimes we feel that doctors are always in a hurry. When you leave the doctor you ask yourself if you have told him everything. So having so much attention and having your case so thoroughly studied is so nice”.

This project is a good example of the commitment of CEU Universities with innovation and comprehensive education. Therefore, education in our centres goes beyond the contents of the résumé, paying special attention to soft skills or transversal skills and specially to emotional intelligence, key for the future of our students.