Emotional Intelligence of Nurses in Tertiary Hospitals in Dali, the People’s Republic of China

Abstract

Emotional intelligence plays an important role in regulating the emotions induced by fatigue or stress and it is critically required in nurses who work in dynamic hospital environments. Nurses' emotional intelligence helps them to create a positive work environment in various unfavorable situations in order to provide patients care in a supportive manner. The aim of this study was to assess nurses' emotional intelligence in tertiary hospitals in Dali, the People's Republic of China. The participants were 291 nurses working at two tertiary hospitals. Data were collected via the Demographic Data Form and the Chinese Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze demographic and emotional intelligence data. Results showed that, generally, nurses perceived high levels of emotional intelligence. More specifically, nurses perceived high levels of emotional intelligence in themselves and moderate levels of emotional intelligence in others. They also perceived moderate levels for their ability to regulate their own emotions and for their use of emotion to facilitate performance. This study provides essential information regarding nurses' emotional intelligence. Nurse managers should use this study's results to develop strategies that assist their nurses' efforts to improve emotional intelligence.

Level of emotional intelligence among nurses

“…The majority of the nurses were female (84.6%), and the minority were male (15.4%). This is similar to the study conducted by Hua et al (2019), where their studies comprised of 99.31% female nurses and 0.69% male nurses. In this study, there were more nurses whose age was <28 years (50.8%), compared to those ≥ 28 years (49.2).…”

“…In this study, there were more nurses whose age was <28 years (50.8%), compared to those ≥ 28 years (49.2). However, another study showed that there were 57.73% of nurses whose age ranged from 20-30 years, 31.62% of those whose age ranged from 31-40 years, and only 10.65% of nurses with age ranging from 41-50 years and above (Hua et al, 2019). This also indicated that both our study and other study were similar, where the number of respondents comprised of younger nurses compared to the older nurses.…”

“…This showed that nurses had higher self-emotion awareness due to their profession itself that require them to assess, understand and express their feeling in their daily interactions with patients' and their family as well as other healthcare personnel that led to higher scores in self-emotional awareness. Similarly, in the study by Hua et al (2019), nurses had higher mean value and standard deviation (22.80 ± 3.48) in the dimension of SEA. In contrast, it was reported that nurses scored lower mean value and standard deviation (19.20 ± 4.33) in the dimension of ROE.…”

“…Lastly, this study included 50% of nurses who worked in general settings (medical/surgical) and 50% of nurses who worked in critical care settings. Nevertheless, Hua et al (2019) showed 32.99% of their respondents were from medical unit, 29.55% surgical unit, 6.87% paediatric unit, 4.47% obstetrics and gynaecology unit, 6.19% operating room, 6.53% emergency room, 5.50% intensive care unit, and 7.90% out-patient department.…”

“…Thus, it is concluded that EI should be incorporated into nurses' training. In addition, studies have shown a significant relationship between the level of EI and age, years of experience, marital status (Srinivasan & Samuel, 2016), types of the hospital (Tomar, 2016), and gender (Hua et al, 2019).…”