Emotional intelligence may be defined as the ability of a person to understand and respond to one’s own and others’ emotions and use this ability to guide one’s thoughts and actions [1]. Emotional intelligence is essential for all human interactions. The ‘emic’ perspective of emotional intelligence helps a person understand and regulate their own emotions and use them for effective human interactions. The ‘etic’ perspective of EI helps them relate to the emotions, empathize and respond to the emotions of others. Both these perspectives are essential for effective human interactions [2]. In medicine, a profession that thrives on human interactions, emotional intelligence is of great importance [3]. There is increasing interest in the recent times on the importance of emotional intelligence for effective clinical practice. Empathy and compassion have always been desirable virtues in a doctor [4]. The ability to empathize improves clinical interactions as well as brings out good clinical outcomes [5]. Studies have shown that physicians who demonstrate empathy are more effective in eliciting a good history, arriving at an accurate diagnosis and eliciting good compliance to their prescribed treatment [6]. Empathy and compassion in the physician also makes the patients perceive a sense of well-being, which speeds their recovery [4–۷]. These findings emphasize the importance of emotional intelligence in clinical care. Emotional intelligence is not just important for providing good clinical care, it is also important for managing all the human relationships that happen as part of the medical treatment process. Emotional intelligence is important for the physician to effectively work as a team among nurses, hospital managers, and other allied health professionals [8, 9]. It is important to also effectively communicate with the relatives, friends and family of the patients under their treatment [10]. In recent times we are witnessing several instances of violence against doctors and health care professionals in India and many low and middle income countries [11, 12]. The vulnerability of the patients and their relatives, the uncertainty associated with the treatments, overcrowded hospitals and overworked health care providers contribute to many of these violent episodes. They can also be traced back to lack of emotional intelligence among the physicians and health care professionals, thus aggravating the situation and pushing the frustrated patients and their relatives to violence. Therefore, there is a need to impart emotional intelligence skills as part of medical education in creating sensitive and empathetic physicians for the future. The medical curriculum is overloaded with subject content, that often there is very little time allotted for skill development. Much of these soft skills such as effective communication, emotional intelligence, empathy etc. are left to subconscious learning by observation of senior colleagues in action at the bedside and the outpatient clinics. In recent times, active teaching-learning methods are advocated for imparting empathy, emotional intelligence and communication skills in the medical curriculum in many countries. In India, the Vision 2015 document of the Medical Council of India, the apex body in charge of curriculum development for medical education in the country, focussed on the ATCOM module, which is the Attitude and Communication module, in order to impart education on communication skills, empathy, emotional intelligence and ethics [13]. However, implementation of this curriculum in the actual teachinglearning process leaves much to be desired. In this study, we attempted to assess levels of emotional intelligence among the students in a medical college in Chennai, India and to explore their understanding of the role of emotions in medical practice. We used a mixed methods assessment.