A cross-sectional study comparing emotional intelligence and perceived stress amongst community pharmacists delivering and not delivering a new service

Abstract

Background Community pharmacists contribute substantially to public health and person-centred care. Emotional intelligence (EI) may help health professionals better engage with patients, handle stress in challenging situations and, presumably, better introduce and implement new services. Aim The study's aims were to compare the EI and perceived stress (PS) levels of community pharmacists who provided a new service to patients with diabetes with their controls who provided standard pharmaceutical services and to test the correlations between the two constructs. Method This study used a survey methodology. Well-validated instruments were distributed electronically to all participating pharmacists. To compare the continuous EI and PS data between the two study groups, the paired-samples t test was used. Pearson and Spearman’s correlations were used to test the associations between EI and PS and their respective subdomains. Results A total of 86 pharmacists participated in the study (n = 43 in each group). The study groups did not differ by any characteristic except gender. Their mean EI and PS levels were 120.95 ± 11.53 and 17.45 ± 4.55, respectively, with no difference between the groups. In both study groups, inverse correlations were found between PS and EI levels, with statistical significance in the control group and in the overall study population (r = − 0.611 and r = − 0.370, respectively). Conclusion Our results suggest that the introduction of the EI agenda into certification programmes for new community pharmacy services should be considered. The results also suggest that higher EI may have protective effects against PS. Additional research would clarify the need to invest more in such programmes. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11096-023-01542-8.

Perceived importance of emotional intelligence for clinical pharmacy practice and directions for its improvement: a focus group study

“…To the best of our knowledge, this is the rst qualitative study with CPPs aiming to determine the importance of EI for CP practices and the ways to develop it. This study provides new knowledge about the impact of the study, teaching, and learning approaches on EI development in CPPs and may further clarify the results of our previous research [10,18].…”

“…In our research on local pharmacy study practices across all levels of CPD, it became evident that the lack of EI-related and EI-development-stimulating content and methods contributed to a lack of difference in EI levels among pharmacists delivering and not delivering a new service to a vulnerable group of patients with diabetes [10]. We observed no difference in EI levels between pre-and postspecialization graduates [18].…”

“…A focus group semistructured guide with questions and prompts was developed and pretested with three study-independent pharmacists and experts. The guide was constructed based on the existing EI research and concepts and was grounded in qualitative research theory and practice [10,18,[21][22][23][24][25]. Several suggestions for adaptation emerged during the pretest.…”

“…An interactive two-hour session was conducted for all study participants, focusing on the concept of EI, including its models, competencies, instruments, research results, and the study's objectives. The Genos EI instrument, validated and pretested for the Serbian pharmacist population, was introduced to the participants [10]. The Genos instrument comprises subdomains related to emotional self-awareness (ESA), emotional awareness of others (EAO), emotional expression (EE), emotional reasoning (ER), emotional self-control (ESC), emotional self-management (ESM), and emotional management of others (EMO) [23,26].…”

“…Incorporating EI-related content into continuing pharmaceutical development (CPD) programs may enhance CP practice competencies and pharmacists' stress-handling abilities [1,[8][9][10]. However, some authors have questioned the lasting impact of EI development programs and how they translate into clinical practice, thus potentially improving patient-related outcomes (PROs) [6].…”