**3. Discussion**

In light of the global changes and challenges that face many professionals in the 21st century, there is an increasing understanding that it is of primary importance to develop and foster social–emotional skills, also referred to as "soft skills", among workers in a wide range of fields. A prominent example is the field of healthcare. Skills that are likely to benefit healthcare professionals may include emotional self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and interpersonal relations. These, as well as other social–emotional skills, were noted to improve coping abilities, academic learning and professional effectiveness among both medical teams and healthcare management teams [49, 50].

The importance of social–emotional skills to medical staff and to healthcare systems and their currently limited place in medical school curricula, call for a proactive initiative on the part of academic institutions. Such an initiative should address needs and challenges, both current and future, that face healthcare professionals and can transform medical schools from knowledge providers to leaders of cultural and social changes.

Given the noted difficulties to integrate the development of social–emotional skills into existing curricula in the field of healthcare, we propose a novel and holistic SE-SD tool that integrates social–emotional learning into existing curricula while overcoming time and workload barriers.

Furthermore, the assignments that form part of the SE-SD tool are prepared and provided ahead of time by the tool designers, and therefore instructors do not require any prior expertise in the field of social–emotional learning in order to implement the tool as part of their courses.

Effective implementation of social–emotional skill development programs has been noted to benefit from a supportive climate. It is therefore highly recommended that faculty is included in the proposed social–emotional training process. Social– emotional training is expected to heighten faculty awareness of the importance of the process, increase their willingness to take risks as they implement the SE-SD model in their respective institutions, and enable them to model socially-emotionally behaviors and to 'walk the talk' [49]. All these were found to contribute to the development of social–emotional skills in students.

In addition to academic institutions which can take upon themselves to develop social–emotional skills in students and faculty, development of these skills should form an integral part of on-going professional training for both healthcare staff in post-academic settings. Such life-long learning will support earlier development efforts in academic institutions and will insure its sustainability.

Lastly, although research regarding the effectiveness of the SE-SD tool is still a work in progress, we believe that the use of integrative learning methodologies like the one described here would bring healthcare academic institutions and their graduates one step closer towards adapting to the 21st century and meeting its demands.

*Medical Education for the 21st Century*
